Irony.

I’ve been stalling on the Day 3 recap and I think it’s because it was just a very underwhelming day for me for some reason. Maybe because it started out shittily when Henry was all, “LET US NOT FORGET WE ARE NOT RICH” and then took me to some shady Burger King/Dunkin Donuts/gas station compound in some industrial area near Douglas Park where we had cheap, greasy breakfast and I refused to use the bathroom because it required one to ask the person behind the Burger King counter to push a button to unlock it and that seemed like a HASSLE so I pouted about it and then Henry suggested that he would go and ask them to push the button on my behalf so I could just stand by the door and wait for it to open, but then I had more off-the-cuff excuses, like how filthy it probably was and I bet there was a Trump sticker in there on the mirror and why is Henry THE WORST UGH.

Then there was some scraggly white guy skulking around outside and I thought he was going to come in and start stabbing us but Henry was like, “WTF are you talking about?” and then the guy was GONE so did my pee-delirium conjure him up? WAS HE NOT REAL?

Anyway, we left and had a million minutes to just cruise around the perimeter of Douglas Park because gates weren’t open yet but luckily they have portapotties outside of the gates so I was able to at least pee before those things got disgusting.

Once we got inside, Henry whined because he forgot the sunblock that he made a huge deal about buying earlier that morning. I saw a man with  AN ENTIRE SHEATH of it slathered across his neck and suggested that Henry just do a drive-by lotion-snatch by dragging his hand across the dude’s throat, but Henry didn’t think this was an excelsior idea.

I mean, the guy had more enough to go around, is all I’m saying.

We walked past some radio station’s booth and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was playing.

“For years when I was a kid, I thought this was a Police song,” I said to Henry, basically pouring my heart to him. “And when I found out it was actually Yes, I refused to believe it.”

Henry just murmured a “wow” or a “you don’t say” — some sort of placating snort — which made me scream, “HELLO, I TELL YOU THIS SAME STORY EVERY TIME WE HEAR THIS SONG AND YOU NEVER REMEMBER!”

THAT’S BECAUSE HENRY DOESN’T ACTUALLY LISTEN TO ME! He doesn’t care about my musical past!

UGH.

OK, let’s not beat around the bush. Sunday’s lineup was very underwhelming for me. Friday and Saturday were so stacked, but then Sunday was mostly just two bands that I really wanted to see: Thursday and Deftones.

Here’s who we saw:

• The Bronx: It’s been a few years since we last saw The Bronx (I think at Warped Tour) so I was pretty stoked to get the day started right. Henry even clapped once! I’ll never understand his criteria for not hating a scream-y band, but apparently The Bronx meets it.

• Frank Iero and the Patience: Last time I saw Frank was two years ago with a different band (or the same just with a different name? I don’t follow him closely enough to know these things) called the Cellabration. My favorite part of this set was before it even started, when one of the security broads came over and started talking to me about my Marcy tattoo and then we had a long ass talk about pets and Henry was just like, “I’m going to back up a bit so that I don’t get dragged into this conversation too” and it was really nice actually! Her name was Misha. I preferred her over the three idiots who squeezed in next to me and proceeded to talk about how they didn’t really even know who was Frank Iero is but they were happy that the stage was in the shade. And the one guy had his back toward the stage through most of the set and stood there directly facing me. It was so uncomfortable. I checked twitter at one point just to have somewhere else to put my eyes since dude was so close to my face, and I saw that Nick Martin from Sleeping with Sirens tweeted that Frank Iero was currently killing it at Riot Fest, so I was like, HENRY, NICK MARTIN IS HERE and within a minute, Henry found him because Henry begrudgingly knows who everyone is thanks to me shoving it into his face. “Doesn’t he wear those stupid hats*?” Henry asked. I saw yeah because I knew exactly what Henry meant, so Henry pointed into the middle of the crowd and said, “He’s right there, with that girl in a tye-died dress.” Henry: Scene Dad Extraordinare.
  • *a newsboy cap.
    • What the hell, I just opened up Instagram because I needed to take a break from purging all of this information and this is literally, no joke, you have my word, the second picture that popped up in my feed, from NICK MARTIN:

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• All Dogs: We had time to kill after Frank Iero, so we went over and sat by the two small stages, where we caught a bit of All Dogs who weren’t bad for a girl singer. Henry had no comment.
• Dee Snider: This was me throwing a bone to Henry, but also because I was mildly interested in seeing him too. “My only knowledge of Twisted Sister is from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Flight of the Navigator,” I admitted to Henry on our walk over to the Roots Stage and he was just like, “Oh for god’s sake.” Um, I don’t know what to say about Dee Snider. He got the crowd hyped? We made it through one song before Henry said, “OK, I’m satisfied. Let’s go.”

• Juliette Lewis and the Licks: I mean, come on — it’s Juliette fucking Lewis. I’m not exactly a fan of her band but I love her as an actress so I felt a certain obligation to at least witness one or two songs in person. She is definitely a performer! And she can sing! But I just don’t really like that style of rock so I would probably not buy her album or go out of my way to see another show. She was a great crowd-surfer though!

I was getting cranky as fuck during her set, so Henry fed me. I had the good old standby: Connie’s pizza. Who cares what Henry had. A hotdog probably.

Honestly, I think Henry and I both chose poorly and we should have skipped both Dee and Juliet in favor or With Our Arms to the Sun. Sigh.

• A Will Away: I have been dying to see these guys again since they opened for Pentimento last fall. The downside though is that I could only stick around for three of their songs because their set overlapped with Thursday. But I was happy to have the opportunity to stand at the barrier and support this small band for as long as I could because they’re so good! Love you, bebes. Come back to Pittsburgh soon so I can give you my full, undivided attention!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLY6fC1D2kS/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

• THURSDAY!!! Oh you guys I was waiting for this moment all weekend. When Thursday broke up, I was devastated. I didn’t get a chance to see them on their final tour and at that time, it didn’t seem like a reunion was ever in the cards because they were kind of open about the fact that they just weren’t able to work together. But they quietly and unexpectedly started hinting at something earlier in the year, and I told Henry, “I bet they’re going to play Riot Fest!” and I was right. God, I love being right. Anyway, Henry doesn’t like Thursday and didn’t even care when Geoff Rickly passed out on stage at Coachella 2004 because he was ill. Henry has no heart. Also, it occurs to me that there were a ton of bands I got to see at this year’s Riot Fest that I had also seen twelve years ago at Coachella. What a weird parallel. Geoff told us that they everyone in the band was able to work out their differences and now they were back to enjoying each other’s company and it seemed so genuine to me but Henry just rolled his eyes. Look, Geoff has terrible luck when it comes to the industry and I’m just always rooting for him so stuff your jeers back up into your asshole, Henry. Ugh.

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• Bad Religion: I mean, kind of required, right? You can’t go to a festival like this and not stick around for at least a few Bad Religion songs. Henry was like, “I do not care for these people either way” but I was glad to rest for awhile during their set because I was just feeling so tired and weak probably from all the crying and swooning I had been doing all weekend.
• Underoath: Another recently reunited band. Henry was like “I do not know any of their songs” but he knew that this is the band with Aaron Gillespie and even knew what he looked like, so it was yet another small victory for me—Henry hears some of what I say! SOME.

I      

• Deftones: Gahhhhh, how have I only seen this damn band one time!? It was all the way back in 2001 when I went to Rolling Rock Town Fair with my ex-friend’s ex-husband (NOT a date but I think he might have thought it was and it was extremely awkward and really hot and might have been the worst music festival I’ve ever gone to in my whole entire life and just thinking about it makes me feel uncomfortable). So even though I don’t really keep up with their current music, I was still stoked to see them, especially since they played right around dusk and it was kind of romantic — well, it could have been but Henry and I were both on each others nerves by then I think.
  • This band brings back really warm and vibrant memories of driving like a maniac in my Eagle Talon all hours of night during the summer of 1998, blasting Deftone’s “Adrenaline” CASSETTE TAPE and just having the best fucking summer of my life. “Bored” was my motherfucking jam. They didn’t play it at Riot Fest, but they treated us with enough old shit that I was satiated.
• Rob Zombie: I am by no means a Rob Zombie fan (though I do I appreciate some of his contributions to the horror  movie industry) so we actually didn’t intend to watch any of his set (he was performing White Zombie’s Astro-Creep 2000 in its entirety), yet we caught some of it anyway just by being in the general proximity. Henry wanted to just leave after Deftones, and to be honest, I would have been fine with that but I felt like, as a music lover at heart, I felt that I needed to experience at least a few minutes of the Misfits (more on that in a bit). Anyway, Rob was OK! I didn’t hate it. I knew more songs than I thought I would.
  • HOWEVER, the little “mall” area was right near the two main stages, so we went over to finally get Henry a Stheart beanie since every year I’m like, “Get a Stheart beanie” and he never does. We ended up getting into a fight at this time because that’s what spending money does—pits us against each other.  So picture it: it’s super dark, Riot Fest is at its peak as far as attendance, and I decide I’ll show Henry who’s boss BY STORMING OFF AND TRYING TO LOSE HIM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CRAZY FUCKING ROB ZOMBIE/PRE-MISFITS CROWD. I mean, what is that even going to prove?! I thought that I had efficiently lost his tail, and so I plopped down in the middle of the park, not giving a fuck about getting trampled, and just sat there in full pout-mode. A few minutes later, I happened to look over my shoulder and that motherfucker was standing back there laughing at me, because of course he wouldn’t let me out of his sight, he’s like a Professional Dad. So them I reluctantly went over to stand with him because let’s be real: I didn’t know where he parked the car and even if I did, my set of car keys were back home in Pittsburgh with my wallet because I’m still an irresponsible child. When I got to Henry’s side, he started cracking up and then I did too even though I was trying to be angry.
    • Apparently, in the five minutes we were estranged, some kid was standing next to Henry and then must have recognized him as a NARC because Henry said he got all flustered and hurriedly put away his drugs and then left. Nice job, Cap’n DEA!
• Sleater Kinney: They played at the same time as Rob Zombie, but we got to see some of their set when we cut across the park for dinner (I had a veggie dog with veggie chili and Henry bought a full Connie’s pizza which they were selling for $10 at the end of the night in an effort to get rid of everything.  I’m not a huge riot grrl by any means, but I was glad that we got a small dose of Sleater Kinney, especially when they commended Riot Fest’s no tolerance/anti-harassment policy. Every time someone uses the stage and their microphone to speak out about this issue, a rapist loses a dick. (NOT REALLY BUT I WISH.)

• The Misfits: A few months ago, Riot Fest announced that the ORIGINAL LINE UP of the Misfits were reuniting after 33 years, and Riot Fest snagged them as the main headliner of the weekend. It was a huge deal, all music websites were writing about it, it was trending on Twitter, even people I work with had heard about it and recognized it as a huge deal. But….I was just like “meh” paired with an uncommitted shrug. Yes, I understood the gravity of this announcement, that it was like the Haley’s Comet of the music industry. I understood how much of an impact they’ve had on the scene, how they’ve inspired current bands that I love, how many of my friends were excited yet also jealous that I was going to be there for this. But let me tell you what the Misfits represent for me. They represent a shitty, abusive, psychologically-damaging relationship I was in when I was 17-19. I dated a guy who loved them. We would listen to them in his car, even though I loved rap music back then. I never complained and was open to learning about them, and Anal Cunt, and Gwar. Mike loved the Misfits so much, and for our first Valentine’s Day, I used my mom’s AmEx to buy him some fancy boxed set that came in a coffin and set me (lol, my mom) back $70. In return, he took me to Donut Connection that night, where I had to watch him eat a donut and drink coffee because I didn’t bring any money with me and he only had a coupon for himself. It’s not that I expected some lavish gift, for him to spend as much on me as I had on him, but it was the fact that he completely disregarded my gift, overlooked the sentiment, and then just took an insulting dump all over the night. So when I think of the Misfits, I think of that fucking asshole and all the shitty things he did to me and how nothing I did for him was ever enough and Henry, I’m sorry I’m a shitty girlfriend but THAT GUY TOOK ALL I HAD TO GIVE. I mean….breathe Erin. Breathe.  So yeah, the Misifts. Cool show. We left after four songs.

Well, if you made it this far, congratulations! Here is a YouTube of my Snapchat stories for all three days, because why not.

I think, if I had to choose, that Saturday was my favorite day of Riot Fest. Henry was being a cunt on Friday (he claims he was “tired” and “didn’t feel well;” see also: IS OLD AS FUCK) but after a really great leisurely morning of exploring Little Village and having some legit Mexican breakfast, we were both like, IN SYNC. Like MENSTRUAL CYCLES. But without the mood swings.

And blood.

Wait – did I bleed at all that day?

No.

:(

Originally, I said we didn’t have to get there early because the first band I had my heart set on seeing didn’t even start until 2 or some other late as fuck time of the day. However, we still ended up getting there by 11:30, without even rushing, and there was barely a line by that point so we just strode right on in.

Well, Henry did.

I had to be frisked and have my purse pillaged and I forgot that I had a plastic container of Mentos gum in there and the security broad threw it out, nooooo.

We had some time to check out the vendors, one of which was our favorite–Choonimals! We bought Chooch an obligatory pizza shirt because god forbid we come home empty-handed. I wanted to get him a Trump shirt that said Fuck Boi on it but Henry frowned heavily even though he approved of the shirt in general.

BANDS OF THE DAY

• Brick + Mortar: The first band we saw was Brick + Mortar on the Roots Stage. I didn’t know anything about them other than what I read on the Riot Fest website a few weeks ago. It was just two guys playing honest indie rock, and I’m going to be real here: I’m not sure if I genuinely liked the music, or if I was just captivated by the hilarious guy they had on stage with them, dancing around like an idiot, coming back out dressed like a fairy-thing, and just being overall entertaining. Henry liked them too, so you know that the music wasn’t very offensive. It was a great start to the day though! Especially when the singer thanked everyone for taking a chance on them and that they had recently won a battle against their record label for the rights to their music, and that’s always something to clap about.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BK8LqP_DsFH/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

• Plague Vendor: Right after Brick + Mortar ended, Plague Vendor started their set on the neighboring Riot Stage. I told Henry that I didn’t think he was going to like them, but Henry surprised me by saying, “They’re not bad. He’s like…Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop had a baby.” WHOA. He likes a band, kind of, enough to make comparisons?! This day was really off to a great start. (Plague Vendor is fucking amazing, by the way—frenetic, rowdy California punk rock fronted by a singer with moves slick enough to make MJ grab his crotch in appreciation.

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• Microwave, acoustic set: Thank god for these StubHub acoustic sets, because I was unable to see Microwave perform later that day as a full band, due to scheduling conflicts. (They had the unfortunate scheduling luck of going up against Motion City Soundtrack, who were playing their penultimate show, but now I’m seriously regretting my choice.) I always miss this band when they come to town! Henry immediately peaced out, getting lost in the depths of his phone (what does he actually read on his phone!? I can’t even imagine. He only has like 79 Facebook friends so scrolling through this feed can’t take very much time and what else do old people use Smartphones for?!), and ignored the whole acoustic set, which admittedly wasn’t the best acoustic set I’ve ever seen (Nathan, the singer, seemed kind of nervous) but it was still good to hear some Microwave, even in that soft, scaled back capacity. He even covered that fucking “I’ve got a brand new pair of rollerskates” song which I thought for sure would appeal to Henry, since he’s old and probably danced with some big-haired hussy to that song at a school dance at some point in his life.

Henry ignoring Microwave.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKd6yiHAhkA/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

• Jessica Hernandez: NOPE. She was playing on the main stage and we had time to kill so we were sitting down in the grass and I was just like, “I CAN’T TAKE THIS BROAD’S VOICE, UGH BUT I’M TOO COMFORTABLE TO MOVE.” Also, I tried to snag a sip of Henry’s beer around this point but he yelled at me because there was “SECURITY” right next to us and I wasn’t wearing a 21+ wristband. Oh for fuck’s sake, Henry. Like anyone would ever do a double-take if they saw me drinking alcohol! Unless they thought Henry was my dad and I’m a super-old-looking teenager? A teenager who’s seen some shit? Anyway, this broad considers her band to be “dark soul and goth pop” but I didn’t get that vibe at all. All I got was some Gwen Stefani-mimicking annoying bray backed by trombones. Not a fan.

• HippoCampus: We walked over to the Roots Stage to wait for Hippocampus to start, but Jessica Hernandez said, “We got two more songs for you!” and I was like, “WHAT? HOW?!!?” because it was like one minute away from Hippocampus starting on the neighboring stage. The Riot and Roots staging alternate, so as soon as one band is done, the next band immediately starts on the other stage, and Riot Fest is pretty good about keeping the schedule accurate. However, Jessica wouldn’t shut her trap, and then the powers-that-be did my favorite thing ever: THEY SHUT HER DOWN. She just kept singing, no sound coming out, until she finally realized what was happening and frantically waved her mic around like they were going to turn the sound back on for her, like it was an accident, like she was better than the next band and allowed to abuse her time on stage. Fuck OFF, Jessica Hernandez. Meanwhile, Hippocampus ended up being kind of boring, but I’m still glad they didn’t have their set cut short by that dumb bitch.
• High Waisted: Since Hippocampus wasn’t capturing my heart, I looked at my app to see who else was playing. I quickly skimmed the bio for High Waisted, which mentioned 1960s SURF and DREAM POP, and I was on board. “I thought you don’t like female singers?” Henry asked when we rolled up to the tiny Storyheart Stage. He will never understand my criteria. This band seemed like it was in my wheelhouse and I was willing to give them a chance, and thank god for that because they ended up being a huge highlight of the whole weekend, especially when they had a legit Dick Dale breakdown at the end of the set. Plus, the singer, Jessica Louise, was hot AF! Unlike that other Jessica (Hernandez *hisssss*), this one had an Erin-pleasing voice. They’re on tour right now with Somos and Free Throw and of course it’s not coming to shitty Pittsburgh.

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• Motion City Soundtrack: They were next on the Roots Stage and Henry begrudgingly followed me there. Neither of us are actually fans of this band and in fact, I can’t tell you how many times I walked right past whatever stage they were playing at numerous Warped Tours. I think probably because I associate them with Christina’s crazy sister. But this is the last tour they’re doing, probably for like 5 years at which point they will realize how much money there is to be made on reunion tours, and then they’ll be all, “Wow, we forgot how much we loved making music as this band so now we have a new album coming out! And another tour after that!” I mean, I can’t judge. At least five bands I really fucking love have done this to me over the last 10 years. But still, I wanted to be there and actually watch them for what might be my only chance ever. I only really know two songs and they played both of them so I was content. Henry made his “I don’t get it” face the whole time, and truthfully, we spent most of the set willing someone to “accidentally” step on this bitch who wouldn’t stand up:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKmB424AsBD/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

Chooch’s new shirt for picture day.

Admittedly, my favorite part of the set was when some girl pushed her way through us and Henry casually said, “Oh hello, come on in.” I don’t know why it made me crack up as much as it did, other than the fact that I was fucking high on life. And then we saw a guy with flipflops literally tattooed to his feet. OH OK.

• Bob Mould: I hope if you’re reading this that you know who Bob Mould is, but if you don’t: GET YOUR STUDY ON. He’s a living alt-rock legend, and his 80s bands Husker Du and Sugar are both essential for any music fanatic. I have never seen him before so I was pretty giddy about this, especially since he was supposed to be at the first Riot Fest I ever went to but then WASN’T and then when he was in Pittsburgh, I WAS AT RIOT FEST. Guys, these are the big problems in my life, OK? Anyway, a fun fact about Bob Mould is that when Henry and I first started dating, or whatever you want to call, he was way more accepting of my musical tastes and Bob Mould’s “New #1” was like, our song or something. I guess. We haven’t listened to it together in like 10 years because we don’t love each other anymore.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKmBqngAdAr/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

• Balance & Composure: But, as much as I love me some Bob Mould, I REALLY FUCKING LOVE ME some Balance & Composure, so we split the Riot Stage about 30 minutes into Bob’s set and ran over to the small Rebel Stage, where B&C was setting up and I pulled Henry all the way to the front, which he just LOVES. Right away though, I heard A Voice that immediately made me feel angry and tense and then I realized it was the obnoxious Minnesota know-it-all from the line to get in on Day One! Henry started cracking up and I just slowly turned back around and proceeded to block her out. Luckily, I had SAM and her SNOWCONE to fixate on. She was standing next to me and I know her name is SAM because she saw one of her friends, who came over with another friend, and introductions were made but then they left and SAM continued to stand alone with her BLUE snowcone. She was interesting. And of course we saw her like 87 times the rest of the weekend too. Always alone! I felt so sad for her. But then B&C started playing and everyone around me just melted away. For being up against so many heavy-hitters and being relegated to the smallest stage, they really had a shit ton of people there for them! I don’t know what to say about this band other than they are just excelsior alt-rock, kind of emo-revivalist, really great song-writing, the kind of music you want to listen to in the car while driving around in October wearing your favorite sweater and MAYBE DRINKING A MAPLE LATTE TOO. They are for sure an autumn band for me, like just writing about this right now makes me want to go on a haunted hayride, good thing it’s October 1. (OMG it’s October 1 and I’m not done writing about Riot Fest, whyyyyy.) They have a new album coming out so they started their set off with two songs from that and then Jon (he’s the SINGER, you guys) admitted that they were nervous as fuck to perform those songs for the first time, and it did kind of seem like they were stiff and uncomfortable but once they dove into the old jams, they were shining like diamonds. For the record, I love the new songs they’ve released so far. This is one of them, it’s called POSTCARD and you should listen:

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Go back to Minnesota.

After Balance and Composure, we had some time to wander around and forage for food before Brand New started at 6:15. It was around this time that I thought I saw Justin Bobby and Henry was all WHO and I said “Justin Bobby” and Henry was all “…………….” and then I yelled, “FROM THE HILLS!?!?” Fuck Henry, turn on MTV sometime in 2006, OK?

I ended up getting one of the most texturally interesting veggie burgers ever:

I think it was made with potatoes. I liked it. It could have been warmer but it’s better than the soft pretzel I’d be eating at Warped Tour, so who am I to complain. Those food vendors are amazing every year though I feel like this year wasn’t as on point as the past two years. (I’M STILL NOT OVER THE FACT THAT DARK MATTER WASN’T THERE WITH THEIR HOT, HEAVENLY NECTAR A/K/A COFFEE. I missed those tiny donuts that were there last year too. Come back, tiny donuts.)

We saw, for the second time that day, a girl wearing the same Emarosa “For Fox Sake” shirt that Chooch has. She was sitting down with her friend and I did that thing that Henry loves where I boisterously comment on someone’s attire (I can’t tell you how many times I get all Tourettes-like when we’re in another city and I see someone wearing a Penguins shirt). I ran up to the girl and screamed, “I LOVE EMAROSA!” She was clearly caught off guard. I could tell by the way her hand flew to her chest and she let out a startled, “Oh!” But then she said, “Yeah, they’re fantastic!” and that response satisfied me so I continued on my way.

“Why do you have to do that?” Henry groaned.

Anyway, it was around this point where I started to notice a lot of vendors had put up Morrissey-related signs regarding their food and I didn’t realize until later it was because one of his stipulations for playing Riot Fest was that all food vendors had to stop selling meat after 8pm. Obviously I’m a huge fan of THE CURE but I am just a basic, average fan of the Smiths and not really a fan at all of Morrissey as a solo artist (not for any reason other than I just never really paid attention to it because I’ve been too busy worshiping at the feet of Robert Smith almost my whole life), so I didn’t know that this is something Moz supposedly requires of all venues he’s playing at. I guess it really sent Riot Fest attendees over the edge though because the comments I was reading online were so fucking hostile. Like, if you ever hear me complain about not being able to eat a certain food for a two hour block, please fucking kill me. Personally, as a vegetarian, this really made me respect Morrissey a lot more. How fucking punk rock is that?! Plus it incited so much controversy, which come on, who doesn’t love some fucking music drama!?

No one thought Riot Fest would comply to Moz’s demands, but they did and that made my veggie burger taste even more delicious and satisfying, not gonna lie. It’s not everyday us herbivores get a victory.

Riot Fest really starts to get crowded around 5. That’s around the time my stranger-danger anxiety usually starts to set in, but the way they had the stages set up this year made it feel like less of a cluster.  I mean, I still clung to Henry’s shirt tail like my life depended on it, but it wasn’t as gnarly as past years.

• Brand New: Henry was being so nice to me around this time! So now instead of associating Brand New with terrible Christina things, I think I will associate them with Henry kind of showing me something that resembled affection! It was nice. But then he said he only knew one song that Brand New played that night and I was like, “YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT THERE IS NO WAY YOU DIDN’T KNOW AT LEAST 75% OF THAT SET LIST, YOU MOTHERFUCKING MORON” and then the mood was killed. But seriously though it was a delightful set. We stood far back enough that we didn’t have to deal with any of their asshole fans (honestly, Brand New has some of the douchiest fans I’ve ever encountered and I can’t even imagine them in real life scenarios outside of a Brand New show). I feel really lucky to have gotten to see them twice in two months, although I’m kind of annoyed that I didn’t jump at the chance to buy tickets to their upcoming Cleveland show because they just announced that they’re playing The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me in its entirety, fuck my life. I also think it’s kind of interesting that Jesse Lacey basically made a career of trolling his fans yet people still fall over themselves to see his band play. There’s a sick kind of respect there, I guess. (I do think this band deserves every accolade it receives though and anyone who says they’re overrated can go fuck themselves because I’m pretty sure Jesse Lacey is a fucking mad genius and when he sings Degausser I lose it every time.) Here is someone else’s video of it because I only have a few Snaps:

Honestly, what else is there to say about Brand New?

Somewhere around this time, we had our third conversation about rats (????). This time we were talking about how we saw rat traps in the yards of the houses we walked past that morning and Henry was mouthing off about how bad rats are, etc., and I said, “Yeah but, some of the rats of NIMH were good though…”

“Those were cartoons, Erin,” Henry sighed.

JUDGING.

• Death Cab For Cutie: This band needs no introduction. There was a chunk of my early 20s when they were my shit, I loved this band so much, before that TV show The O.C. made them a household band (I mean, good for them! But I’m just saying…) However, I stopped listening to them almost entirely after Transatlanticism. Not because I thought they got sucky or anything like that, but because I associated them with this. Basically, I was listening to DCFC when I found out that someone I had a very dysfunctional relationship with had been killed in a car accident/alleged suicide. Pretty hard not to think about that anytime I hear Death Cab nowadays. I actually saw them a week after that happened too, at Coachella in 2004. The first and last time I’d ever see them live, until now at Riot Fest. And I have to say, it felt like beautiful torture. It felt like having my heart ripped out of my chest, only to have it pumped full of life and love and reinserted. It felt healing and necessary. But…if they had played anything from Something About Airplanes, I probably would have had to leave. No lie.

(OH GOD why did I just let myself listen to this?!)

Riot Fest, you are a fucking violent stumble, heart-in-throat, down memory lane, Jesus Christ. I wasn’t ready.

• Morrissey: I had a chance to begin processing the past that had been dredged up slammed into my face after Death Cab’s set since Morrissey kept us waiting for like 30 minutes. I get it, you’re a big star, but FYI: The Cure has never left me standing out in the dark, looking at my imaginary watch. SORRY TO KEEP MAKING COMPARISONS. There was some 30 minute long video montage that we had to suffer through and I guess he does this at all of his shows? OK that’s fine, but maybe don’t do that when you’re playing a festival and people have been there since noon and just want to see you play now so that we can all leave and pass out in our shitty Motel 6 hopefully-clean beds. People were leaving left and right, and Henry really wanted to leave too, but I got all white knight-y and said reasoned, “Come on, it’s Morrissey. We have to see him at least once.” Because unless someone gives me a free ticket, I can’t imagine that I would ever go to a show specifically to see him (unless the Smiths suddenly reunite, then it’s game on). There was a moment where we actually thought that maybe he seriously wasn’t going to be there after all, because when the Riot Fest lineup was announced last spring, he was like, “I never agreed to perform at Riot Fest so this is news to me” in typical Moz-fashion. I mean, you have to admire his consistency with being notoriously difficult and coy, I guess. He did, obviously, come out and immediately began singing “Suedehead” in his typical bombastic fashion and I found myself saying, “IT’S OK MORRISSEY, WE’RE NOT MAD!” because that damn voice. And: “By the way, thanks for opening with a song I know!”

When he sang “Ganglord,” there were images of police violence splayed out on the screen behind him and while it was difficult to watch, it felt so fucking important and I had to give him credit because that was a message that needed to be forced on everyone watching. Like, “Hey guys, you’re here right now enjoying your life at Riot Fest when this is the shit that’s happening in your idiotic country right now. Don’t forget that.” Henry hates it when musicians use the stage as a soapbox but I’m all for it. I feel like more people are going to listen to what their music idols have to say than what a politician is jawing off about, so go for it, Morrissey. Tell us to Dump Trump! WE’RE TRYING!

We stayed for five songs then made our way back down the streets lined with rat traps and rejoiced when we saw our car was still in one piece in the shady parking lot where we left it that morning.

This was by far the best and most emotionally satisfying day of Riot Fest and I wish I could hold it in my hand and squeeze it lovingly like a dove BUT NOT TOO HARD SO I DON’T KILL IT.

Since the shitty “hotel” we’ve stayed at for all three Riot Fests switched brands, they no longer offered breakfast. Not like we were missing much because it was below basic breakfast fare, we were still disappointed because it was convenient and free. Going to Riot Fest is not cheap, you guys, and I’d rather spend my money on merch than food, ugh. All of this is to say we went down the street to some joint called Victoria’s, where I had crepes that were OK and Henry had meats.

Then Meghan Trainor came on (the worst M.T. song of all time, All About That Bass) and I believe this was the first time where I had found myself in a position where there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t change the station! I couldn’t leave because I was still eating. I HAD TO SIT THERE AND ENDURE IT.

Oh, the horror! The pain! But I reminded my ears that soon they would be in Douglas Park, surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful blend of pop punk, punk rock, emo revival, hip hop — it was all going to be there. Some of my most favorite genres, and most favorite bands.

It was going to be OK, ears. It was going to be OK.

After breakfast, we went back to the “hotel” and ordered the first Uber of the weekend, an older man named Woody, who, in spite of having his GPS up on his dash, asked Henry unlimited questions regarding the route. Henry was happy to answer because he is a PROFESSIONAL DRIVER and I can guarantee that Woody’s lack of directional savvy gave Henry his own woody.

Luckily, through numerous detours and train crossings, we made it to Douglas Park with a good 45 minutes to spare before the gates opened. This year, it was set up a bit differently with only one entrance, but I was happy to see that it wasn’t yet a cluster fuck.

Only bad part about standing in line was this uber-annoying Minnesota broad who talked extra-loudly to her friend about how EVERYONE KNOWS HER and HOW MANY TATTOOS SHE HAS and HOW SHE IS SO FUCKING COOL HOW ARE WE NOT MELTING BENEATH HER RADIATING BRILLIANCE. Henry knew right away that she was annoying me so we communicated through eye-expressions alone, and then when she mentioned in her grating Midwest lilt that she COULDN’T WAIT TO SEE BALANCE AND COMPOSURE the next day, Henry started to crack up because I had literally said that same thing about 37403720580 times that morning.

Ughhhhhhh.

Gates opened late as usual and we ran, I mean I ran and Henry slowly lumbered behind me, to the Riot Fest merch tent to snag a set of the limited edition Riot Fest Garbage Pail Kids and then Papa Drunk skipped off to get his 21+ wristband and guess who couldn’t get her own because she left her whole entire wallet in Pittsburgh? My preparedness is a non-factor in my game of life. Do not ever choose me for your zombie apocalypse team.

Ugh. First beer at like 11:30. Get it, Hank.

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We had some time to kill before noon so we stomped around the food vendors looking for Dark Matter because I desperately needed coffee. Couldn’t find it right away, so I settled for a water and while Henry was paying for it, some guy at the next food booth asked, “Hey! Why’s my name on your shirt?” I looked around and when I realized he was talking to me, I had to glance down to refresh my memory with what shirt I was even wearing that day, and it was my beautiful Howard Jones shirt!

So I walked closer and engaged in a rare conversation, because I hate talking to people but Riot Fest is an exception because it makes me remember who I used to be, how alive I once was, and it reminds me that hey, I’m surrounded by a ton of my people right now, so it’s not really stranger danger, right? Anyway, the guy’s name ended up being Howard Johnson (like the hotel, I guess), not Jones, but he had never heard of Howard Jones before so I encourage him to check that shit out.

Henry was like, “OK REMEMBER WHOSE PROPERTY YOU ARE LET’S GO.” He is like, so possessive of me. It’s almost sickening.

(Lol, sike. He was like TAKE HER, SHE’S YOURS.)

(This just brought up a horrible memory of when I was briefly dating this guy Erik in 1998 and we were hanging out at my apartment with some guy named Kevin who I recently met at a Sunoco — hey, I made friends everywhere I went back then when I still had self-esteem — and Kevin, who was totally blitzed off a 40 of Miller’s High Life, asked Erik if he could steal me and Erik said, ugh do you know what he said? He said BE MY GUEST. I have that heart-breaking moment on 8mm, even.)

(Well, fuck you Erik Grove, because now I’m with Henry and here we are at Riot Fest and some cute guy name Howard is talking to me so suck it.)

First band up was Tigers Jaw at noon on the Riot Fest (main) stage.

These guys are on Run For Cover Records, one of my fave labels, but this was the first time I ever saw them live. If you know me, you know that I’m horribly fickle with female singers, but I love the boy-girl sharing of vocal duties going on in this band. It’s fun, feel-good indie rock, you guys and there is no reason why Henry should have said, “Nope, they did nothing for me” other than the fact that he wasn’t paying attention because OMG WHAT ARE HIS 57 FACEBOOK FRIENDS DOING, GOTTA CHECK!

During their set, an older gentleman strolled by and said, “GREAT ALBUM!” while pointing to my Howard Jones “Human Lib” shirt. I agree, guy!

Ahhh, Citizen was next on the Rise stage. I can’t say enough wonderful superlatives about this band. They get me right in the feels, as all the kids and ironic bloggers say these days.

It started to rain during their set and I hated almost everyone around me, but I didn’t let that sully my third live dose of Citizen for 2016. Also, Mat basically dresses like Henry, proving he just doesn’t give a fuck.

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Here’s Henry, secretly enjoying Citizen and his style-twin, Mat.

Right after this was Touche Amore on the Rock Stage and I was ready to burst — they’re part of this trifecta for me which also includes La Dispute and The Saddest Landscape, but I’ve never seen Touche Amore before; it was a long time coming.

Some of the finest post-hardcore I’ve ever heard comes courtesy of this beautiful man. I play their records so loud in the house and Henry and Chooch are always like, full-body eye rolls and grimaces, but GUESS WHAT? Guess who finally jumped aboard the Touche Amore-wagon? Mr. Henry J. Robbins.

“They weren’t that bad,” he mumbled, and then, “I didn’t hate it,” which in regular people’s terms translates to, “Say, I think I actually enjoyed that.”

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After Touche Amore, I had penciled in a small window for getting food. I can’t remember what Henry got, but I enjoyed a wonderful BBQ jackfruit with slaw on top of a slice of Texas toast. It was delicious, except that the slaw was more just a wad of pickled vegetables, which found me for the second time in less than a week explaining to no one in particular that the only pickled things I like are pickles.

Oh, I think Henry had vegetable paella and I accused him of being a vegetarian but he defensively said he wasn’t turning his back on meat, he just simply “didn’t feel like eating meat right then.”

HMM THAT SEEMS WEIRD.

Anyway, thanks to Henry having to also get food, I missed Dillinger Escape Plan so thanks Henry, like you couldn’t have waited until later to eat.

After missing DEP, we wandered over to the outskirts of Douglas Park, where the two smallest stages live. Jule Vera was going to be playing soon on the Storyheart Stage, so we figured we’d just hang out in the grass and take selfies, right Henry? Because that’s totally a thing that Henry does. My hair looked shittier than usual that weekend because remember our shitty “hotel”? Well, they don’t supply their rooms with hair dryers and Henry even tried for a hail mary by inquiring at the front desk if they had any available and the answer was NO THEY DID NOT, YOUR RATTY-HAIRED GIRLFRIEND IS FUCKED, BOIIIII.

So frizzy, air-dried hair it is, then!

We had to suffer through the tail-end of the Far East’s set and I absolutely hated them, like if a person could vomit out of their ears, this would have triggered my aural gag reflex, for sure. Let me just describe it as Reggae No Doubt. I was like GOOD RIDDANCE when they finally ended.

Then it was Tancred, which I kept confusing for Tantric — like, totalllly different band. Fun Fact for anyone who cares: the singer is also the guitarist from Now, Now and the singer from Now, Now is dating Lynn Gunn’s (PVRIS) ex-girlfriend Alexa San Roman, OMG there more you know. Anyway, Tancred is a good example of why I’m picky with girl-fronted bands — they usually tend to have that 90s sound to them and I know this is putting my head on the chopping block, but I really didn’t like a lot of rock or alternative from the 90s, until later on in the decade. SORRY BUT I’M JUST BEING HONEST. In my defense, I was heavily into hiphop, gangsta rap, and R&B back then though.

Also, around this time, Henry started complaining about a “foot cramp” but I was like, “Hmm, that doesn’t sound like the name of any band that I like so I’m officially exiting this conversation, bye now.”

OK, then it was finally time for Jule Vera and I missed Chooch so desperately. (He’s annoying me so much today though, a week later, so I already forget what that felt like.) Chooch has loved Jule Vera since we saw them last winter at the Never Shout Never and blushed the whole time he was posing for a picture with Ansley, their singer:

Not even gonna front here, I got totally misty-eyed during their set because it made me miss Chooch so much. We were sending him pictures of Ansley on Facebook during soundtrack and he was getting so mad at us but then he said “SEND ME VIDEOS.” Originally he wanted us to record their whole set, but contrary to popular belief, I actually don’t like being That Person holding their phone up at concerts. I tend to grab a few Instavids (like 30 seconds in length at a time) just for my own posterity and to have something to post on the blog as a memory of the night.

SO FUCKING SUE ME.

But for Chooch, I broke that rule and recorded 30-60 seconds of every song the performed, but I didn’t feel too asshole-y doing so because I was right against the barrier so I didn’t have to hold my phone up high, which means no one behind me was bothered, and if they were, it was probably because of Henry.

Henry’s mere existence is very bothersome to some.

Is it wrong to say that I think a band is adorable? I also think they’re really talented, but there is something really charming about watching such a young band play their hearts out on stage. I didn’t think I was going to care much for them when I saw them last winter, but I fell for them alongside Chooch. He’s got good taste.

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Some old dude, like even older than Henry, yelled, “Hey what high school do you go to?!?” to Ansley and OK, I get where he’s coming from, but damn dude, that sounded totally creepy, go away. Save that for when you’re role-playing with your old ass wife.

Their finale had to have made new fans out of the unbiased people lounging under nearby trees. Even one of the security guys came over to get a better look and then to me and Henry said, “This shit is crazy!”

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Set Your Goals was up next on the Rise Stage and I was so excited to see them again! They recently reunited and I didn’t even realize how much I missed them. This is the band that Henry always pauses and then asks, “Is this the big guy and little guy?” Ugh, yes Henry. Sure. SYG has the dual-vocals thing going on, and I credit them into getting me into pop-punk, after swearing it off for years. They were my gateway, if you will. I always liked emo and post-hardcore but really never cared much for pop-punk, until I heard one of their songs that Vinnie Cuarana was on, and then Hayley Williams rapping (literally!!) on one of their songs in 2009 really helped the medicine go down.

I made Alisha go see them with me that summer at Mr. Small’s and it was just such an awesome show and I kind of wanted to get punched in the face but it didn’t happen.

Henry was not into it.

This guy stood right by us while sucking on his CHRONIC CANDY lollipop and I wanted him so badly to turn to Henry and offer him a lick, which prompted Henry to later go on a tangent about how Chronic Candy “isn’t actually a drug, Erin!” and like yeah OK but it’s still part of DRUG CULTURE and we all know Henry has the D.A.R.E. insignia tattooed on his left ass cheek.

Oh you didn’t know? WELL NOW YOU DO.

He also has “just say no” on his inner lip.

Anyway, go listen to Set Your Goals.

We tried to catch some of the Citizen acoustic set in the StubHub Tent, which was packed, so we were standing near the entrance when some dumbass rolled up with her friends and proceeded to shriek, totally unrelated to the music, like she had been proposed to and this really set me off so I flipped out and stormed away (I was also suffering through some major coffee-withdrawals, thanks for not having my back this year, Dark Matter!), and had a mini-meltdown, but then Henry calmed me down after some guy stared at me with a scared smile because I think he thought I was yelling at him. Not you, bro. Not you.

Once Henry verbally massaged my frontal lobe, we were able to catch a little bit of Somos on the Storyheart stage. The best way I can explain this band is that they would be perfectly at home on a soundtrack for any 1980s John Hughes movie. This is a good thing! But Henry doesn’t get it, which is why I had to see them alone at Bled Fest last May.

This was the harried, frenzied block of time on Friday where there were three bands playing all around the same time and I wanted to see them all, so after two Somos songs, we had to do a brisk walk to the Rise stage where Glassjaw was playing and can you believe I have never seen Glassjaw in my whole entire life?? Henry thinks this is incorrect, but that’s because we saw Daryl Palumbo’s other band, Head Automatica at the Cure’s Curiosa festival in 2004. So I got to have major chills hearing Daryl’s screams cutting through the early evening Chicago air. No one sounds quite like Daryl Palumbo!

(LOL, a commercial for Motel 6 just played while I’m writing this and our Motel 6 did NOT look like the one on TV at all. Nice try, Tom Bodett.)

FUN FACT: I sold a custom serial killer card to G.G. Allin’s brother last year and it was pretty much the highlight of my card-making career thus far.

Oh man, young emo Erin was READY to see Jimmy Eat World again. I kept trying to remember when the last time was that I saw them, and Henry swore that it wasn’t him because Jimmy Eat World is evidently a band that he would remember seeing. I stressed about this for the whole weekend because I was sure that I saw them at one of the Edgefests in Buffalo but I couldn’t find them listed on any lineups, so then I searched for their all their 2001 tour dates and said, “Well, I just don’t know then because this says they only did Warped Tour in 2001….oh wait I was at that Warped Tour, never mind LOL forever.”

Mystery solved! I saw them at Warped Tour with my pal Wonka.

When I first got into emo, it was through Instant Messenger (good ol’ AIM) and I was chatting with some random, and I remember asking him what his screen name meant. I don’t remember the name anymore, but it had something to do with the band Christie Front Drive, and that’s how I fell down the emo rabbit hole and, 20 years later, still haven’t clawed my way back out. Once he suggested that I listen to the Emo Diaries compilations, I knew it was for me.

(Full disclosure, I was still heavy into nu-metal back then too, hahahah, but emo clearly won the war over my heart.)

The crowd wasn’t too bad. My strategy was to stand behind a lady in a wheelchair because no one wanted to stand right in front of her, which meant the view was pretty clear for me. I’m really picky about how far up I’ll travel into the crowds — I base it on how much I love the band and how big/small the stage is. I do not like being close to the main stage because people scare me and I hate feeling trapped.

Anyway, they played my favorite song, Lucky Denver Mint (mixtape staple!)  Enjoy my finger cameo! I’m good at this!

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It was time for Second Riot Fest Feeding after Jimmy Eat World and I went with a vegan sloppy joe. I think Henry got salt and vinegar fries. Who cares. I kept stealing swigs of his beer and he was getting so angry because “if you had really wanted to drink, you wouldn’t have your left your fucking license at home!!” He kept saying, “I hope you get busted!” because I didn’t have a wristband on, but come on, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m over 21. Maybe it’s debatable in a dark club, but when the sun is shining down on me, the grays are all a’shimmer and the bags under my eyes are looking ready and willing to hold your car keys and Altoids.

So gimme your fucking beer, Henry.

That sloppy joe was wonderful. Riot Fest has the best food! This is what I wish Warped Tour would do — but I guess because it’s at an actual venue and not a park, outside food vendors aren’t allowed in so we have to stick with the standard $10 soft pretzels and nachos or whatever that First Niagara whips up. This is why I just stuff my bag with granola bars!

On the way back to the Storyheart Stage in preparation for BASEMENT!!!, we watched a few minutes of All Time Low at the Rise Stage. I never really got into them that much, so after a song or two, we began to walk away, but then they started the next song and I screamed, “I KNEW IT!!” and ran back to the stage because Vic from Pierce the Veil came out to sing “A Love Like War” with them. Henry was like, “Wha—-what’s happening!?” and had to follow me back. He’s so dumb sometimes. But then he saw Vic and understood.

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For real though, after that song ended, we had to run to the Storyheart Stage because I wanted to be up front for Basement and now, as I type this, I feel like I’m going to start crying because this was the first time that weekend, other than crying about missing Chooch or just being my typical whiny self, that I dropped real tears.

This is the same band that threw a wrench in Henry’s “driving to Disneyworld” plans last April — he wanted to leave on a Saturday morning but then I quietly, while slowly back away, reminded him that I had a ticket to see Basement that night, so we had to wait until 11:30pm that night to embark on our Orlando road trip, lolololololol all the way to the market.

I am obsessed with Al specifically, the guitarist, because he was the man behind the camera in all of the Tuesdays with Tay videos that Henry and I love (well, that I love), and I’m just a huge groupie for Run For Cover Records. Huge. I make Chooch wear their shirt to school in an effort to get those basic Brookline brats interested in good music.

(Hasn’t happened yet, although Chooch played some Emarosa for his friend Dimajio and said that he liked it, so fingers crossed. Chooch is a lot like me in many ways but he hasn’t yet honed the SHOVE YOUR INTERESTS DOWN YOUR FRIENDS’ THROATS skill yet I guess. I’ll work on that with him some more, don’t worry.)

When we were waiting for Jule Vera to play earlier, Henry elbowed me and pointed to the fenced-off area behind the stage, at a white van that had just rolled up. “Isn’t that Basement?” he asked casually. AND IT WAS. Henry is so great at recognizing bands that he hates!

Some of my friends were disappointed in me because I chose Basement over some other band, but bitch please, I’m not going to skip a band that I genuinely love in favor of a band that I don’t like but feel like I’m supposed to watch just to say that I saw them. That’s not me! I like what I like. And Basement pumped me full of life. I love how James has Robert Smith-esque dance moves and I love their energy and their fans aren’t assholes and they’re just adorable Brits who make emotional, heart-felt, energetic rock.

I’m used to disappointing people with my music preferences though. It’s my thang. Bang bang.

Plus, they have a song called Bad Apple and I have a rotten apple tattoo, so I’m kind of obligated to be a fan. <3

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I’m going to listen to them all weekend now because they’re such an autumn band for me. And I finally got Henry to admit that he likes them so it was a big moment in our relationship. This band is just so good, and they are HILARIOUS on social media (their Snapchat stories are entertaining) and I have to say, when a band plays super emotional music but then act like complete clowns on the Internet, I love them even more.

Just do yourself a favor and listen to their latest album. It’s the first release since they came out of hiatus. I mean, I’m no Lou Pappan, but I think “you gonna like it.” (SHOUT OUT TO MY PITTSBURGH READERS LOL.)

Someday, I’ll make it a point of visiting Chicago for no other reason but to be a tourist. But so far, anytime I’ve been there, it’s either been a layover at O’Hare, driving through on the way to somewhere else, or to attend Riot Fest. Riot Fest starts at noon all three days and by the time we get up, eat breakfast, and take a Lyft to Douglas Park (which is on the outskirts of Chicago), there just isn’t any time to like, go stare at our reflections in the Bean or whatever.

This year though, Riot Fest announced that they had scored a lot for festival goers, and Henry said it “seemed like it was in an OK area.” But Henry was like, “I REFUSE TO KEEP PAYING ALL THIS MONEY TO UBER OR LYFT!” so for the second day, we left the “hotel” ridiculously early (like before 9:30) and prayed that we would get a spot.

We were the second car there.

But the upside to this was that we had a ton of free time to explore for once. Maybe it wasn’t the actual city, but it was still a neighborhood of Chicago and I was excited to gawk and ogle the locals. I’m really good at looking like a tourist.

Even here in Pittsburgh.

I have that wide-eyed, lost, looking-for-the-Alamo’s-basement look going on strong.

Henry had us walking for quite some time through a Mexican neighborhood, and I was dying because I love Mexican things but none of the shops were open yet. We passed several men loading up vans with POPSICLE CARTS and I wanted one in the worst way because the flavors were exotic, like guava and tres leches. But they weren’t selling them yet. :(

At first we were just blindly looking for a place to eat breakfast, but then Henry consulted my enemy Yelp and found a place but he was being all weird about it and just kept saying things like “It’s a place with food” and “Just shut your fat face and walk.”

All I knew was that we were walking to “Little Village,” whatever the fuck that is. We just kept walking and walking…

(I seriously just looked at a map of Chicago because I really have no idea where we are in relation to anything every time we go there. Hurray, now I know where Douglas Park is!)

And then we came upon this place, which made me scream, “LET’S GO THERE! UNISEX!”

“The barber shop?” Henry asked in a confused voice.

“How do you know it’s a barber shop?” I cried, my visions of a purple velvet swingers den abruptly dashed.

“Well…because it has pictures of scissors and razors on it…?” Henry answered in that tone he adopts when he thinks my questions are stupid. Sorry, but all of my coddling teachers throughout the years taught me that there are no stupid questions so there. Let’s go get Purped at Unisex.

But then I found a mural and forgot about Purpura Unisex in my delightful and aggressive staging of another Henry photo op.

It’s like reverse instagram husband, you guys.

A MEXICAN PLANT STORE. Ughhhhhh, I wanted to go in so badly but what’s the point—we weren’t going back to the car afterward and I don’t think A Beautiful Mess has posted a DIY for a succulent wig or cacti fannypack yet so how would I carry plants around with me all day?

 Besides, as soon as Henry saw all the religious shit in the window, he quickly steered me across the street.

Luckily, we had arrived at the place with food! And it was legit. None of that Americanized Mexican food bullshit. The waitress had to keep stopping herself from speaking to us in Spanish, that’s how real it was. I love real Mexican culture.

That Jesus aesthetic makes my heart do flip flops.

“I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been around so many Mexicans lately, but I had intense dreams about Christina last night,” I casually told Henry in between sips of the best Mexican coffee in the world.

“Well, she’s not really Mexican, so….” Henry mumbled.

I had rancheros and it was so wonderful. Henry had some type of breakfast staple. I didn’t ask. It probably consisted of eggs and some type of meat.

It was such a fantastic start to Riot Fest:Day 2. And by the time we got back to Douglas Park, the gates were open so we walked right in without having to wait in a dumb line, and we still had 30 minutes to spare before any bands started.

I think Saturday might have been my favorite day.

However! I just realized that I lied when I told Twitter that Henry and I made it all the way to Sunday night before finally fighting, because we fought after we got back to the car Saturday night when I had the audacity to suggest that we go get ice cream. Usually, we get a ride back to the “hotel” (you guys, this place was a dump), and by that time, it’s so late that we don’t feel like doing anything else. But now we had our car and I wanted to go out and get some fancy Chicago ice cream!

Henry’s initial response was to snap at me because he probably wanted to go back to the room and air out his jock, who knows what that weirdo does. So then I snapped back and said something like, “I WAS HAVING SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND NOW I’M GOING TO CRY. YOU’RE MAKING ME CRYYYYYY” and he yelled, “FIND A FUCKING ICE CREAM PLACE, ASSHOLE!” and I was all, “JUST FORGET IT!” and waited until he was already on some highway thing before saying, “Ooh, let’s go to this Black Dog place for gelato!” and of course Henry had to turn around in some unsavory area and go almost all the way back to Douglas Park.

“It would have been awesome if you told me to go here while we were still in the PARKING LOT,” he muttered.

“I would have if you hadn’t MADE ME CRY!” I yelled.

And then he had to drive around the equivalent of our Shadyside* for approximately 20 minutes until he finally found a place to park.

*(A trendy/fancy neighborhood of Pittsburgh that Henry hates because he’s a Blue Collared.)

We passed this art gallery on the way to Black Dog and I asked, “What is this?” to which Henry mumbled, “Stupid.”

You’re right Henry, that was a stupid question because I clearly knew it was an art gallery so STFU.

Anyway, this goddamn place was so worth it. I had a scoop of cassata and brown butter praline and right now, I’m closing my eyes and begging my taste buds to excrete a memory of its flavor.

OK I didn’t actually close my eyes.  I have a hard enough time typing correctly with my eyes OPEN, for fuck’s sake.

Henry had something with goat cheese…and salted cashew caramel? I can’t remember. It wasn’t as good as mine.

“This was totally worth it, right Henry?” I cooed, in the throes of that temporary, short-lived ice cream euphoria.

“It was OK,” he mumbled, trying to get the feeling back in his weener after eating dainty gelato with a pink spoon.

Overall, it was a nice change of pace from the go-go-go environment of Riot Fest, which I can’t wait to recap here for no one but I feel so exhausted every time I try to collect my thoughts. Because I have a lot of those things*.

*(Thoughts, I mean. I have lots of other things too. Like…issues. Neuroses. Pounds.)

Much to Henry’s  inner joy and invisible mirth, yesterday was the third and last day of Riot Fest. It’s also the first day Henry and I fought– we made it so far! Specifically all the way to Rob Zombie’s set where I tried to lose Henry in the crowd like lol ok what is that going to prove. 

Anyway, we saw lots of bands so let’s see what Henry hated, didn’t like, and thought was “not too bad.” (Heads up, he was not impressed by anything on Sunday.)

• The Bronx: They were good…? What?
• Frankiero andthe Patience: I liked that too. (He sounded unsure. I don’t think he knows who this is.)
• All Dogs: I don’t remember if I liked them. Apparently not. 
• Dee Snider: Eh. Novelty. 
• Juliette Lewis & the Licks: Interesting. Not too bad for what we saw before you got hangry. 
• A Will Away: I only saw five minutes of them so I can’t make an informative opinion. (He was sitting alone by a fence for their first few songs, looking like an undercover cop.)
• Thursday: I was never a big fan anyway so that didn’t change. (He breaks my heart.)
• Bad Religion: Pretty much the same. Not a big fan anyway. 
• Underoath: I don’t know. (He scrunched up his face and made a so-so motion with his hand.)
• Deftones: I only knew their older stuff, so. Not bad. Can’t say I’m the biggest fan. (Well they played mostly old stuff, so…)
• Rob Zombie: From what I heard I liked. (When I left him during Rob Zombie, he was standing by himself– obvi–and said that a younger guy was doing DRUGS next to him, but when he saw Henry, he got nervous and put it away. Like no duh, Henry—it’s because you look like a NARC.)
• Sleater-Kinney: We walked through them? That was it. (Yeah right when they were commending Riot Fest for writing a No Harrassment policy – Henry hates when girls stand up for themselves and get all “lippy about their safety” don’t you Henry the Oppressor?)
• Misfits: I don’t get it. 

And now is the time where we ask Henry what his dream Riot Fest lineup would be.  Lol, nevermind. Just Ted Nugent. 

Out of every band there this weekend, Henry’s favorite was “I don’t know.”

Henry got lemonade because “everyone else seems to be getting lemonade.” What a fucking conformist. 

Overall, Henry thinks that Riot Fest “wasn’t a bad weekend. At least it didn’t rain.”

Wow. I feel like a need a fucking butterfly net to catch all those words. 

Oh boy, another day at Riot Fest, another thoroughly interesting and verbose review from Henry. Better get that dictionary handy in case he uses a BIG WORD that you don’t understand probably because it’s some made-up word that Auto Correct chose because I’m typing this on my phone at 11:40pm in our disgusting “hotel.”

• Brick + Mortar: I liked them. 
• Plague Vendor: Mmm, for some reason I did like them. (This was like a huge shock to me. I thought he would hate them. But when they told everyone to get down on the ground, he actually did it and he doesn’t even CLAP when a band tells him to, so….chew on that one.)

• Microwave, acoustic: Ehhhh, I don’t know. Can’t say much. (OK except that this is America and he can actually say whatever he wants, but whatever…)
• Jessica Hernandez: I didn’t think anything of her. 
• Hippo Campus: Hippo Campus….um, nothing special. Did we stay the whole time? No? They were very….(I can’t tell if he just quit talking or if he’s getting all Heathers on us. “They were very.”)
• High Waisted: They were very entertaining. Look I said they were very entertaining.  When do you ever get anything more than that from me, really? (He said that after I got mad at how stupidly succinct he is.) I saw her boob with a star on it. 
• Motion City Soundtrack: Nope. Nothing to say. (He really hates them and I don’t get it.)
• Bob Mould: I don’t know his music that well, so…
• Balance & Composure: Um, I liked them. (he said this in a very upbeat manner and I’m nervous now.)
• Brand New: Mmm, I only knew a couple of their songs, so…(Also, he read a tweet out loud that said Jesse Lacey should come out and sing Morrissey’s set since he was making everyone wait and Henry goes “Isnt the girl from High Waisted?” And I was like “Well no because she’s a girl and Jesse Lacey is the singer for Brand New.” Idiot.)
• Death Cab For Cutie: Eh. (Look, Henry is clearly hard to impress. The  music world isn’t full of Ted Nugents.)
• Morrissey: what I saw wasn’t too bad I guess. I don’t know his music too much to begin with so what would I have to compare it to. (WOW.)

In summary: “It was good up until the end*, I guess. I ate a cheeseburger there today. Nothing special.”

*(He probably means because we had a fight in the parking lot when I said I wanted ice cream HAHAHAHAHA.)

Let’s end with a picture of Henry emerging from his office. I can’t stop laughing at how weird he looks!

(When your significant other goes into a portajohn first to clean the seat for you, that is YOUR PERSON*, don’t ever let ’em go!

*See also: bitch.)

Day one is over and yes, we’re goddamn exhausted but I’m still going to make Henry give his signature half a sentence review of the bands we saw today. Please note this Henry’s opinion is not a reflection of my own. 

• Tigers Jaw: “Nothing Special.”
• Citizen: “They’re good…? That’s it right this second.”
• Touché Amore: “They weren’t too bad.” (WOW, this one shocked me because he hates this type of music and anytime I played their records st home he gets irritated.)
• Jule Vera: “Good. It wasn’t bad. I would go see her again….but not by myself.” (FYI it’s a band not a girl.)
• Set Your Goals (or as Henry calls them “Is this the big guy and little guy?): “Eh. I don’t like them live.”
• Somos: “Uh, didn’t like them.”
• Glassjaw: “Mmm. no.”
• Jimmy Eat World: “Yeah. I did like them but also I like them anyway so…” (?????)
• Basement: “Hold on, I’m eating. I would see them again. They were good.”
• Pierce the Veil: “They’re the same every time. Though they’re getting a little….showy. I like them, but….I don’t know.”

Food: “I had salt & vinegar fries which were not that bad. Oh I had paella from Man with a Pan. Vegetable paella.”

(Guys Henry is a vegetarian now I think.)

Uber drivers: “The first one I don’t think has ever driven anyway, apparently. And the second one, he was a nice guy.”

(If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Henry over the years, it’s that he hates being a passenger and nothing exacerbates that more than using Uber and Lyft.)

Day One summary: “It was very tiring and I don’t want to do it again.”

Let me preface this with a preemptive apology because I know without even reading it that this post is sloppy as fuck. I wrote it like a lunatic on frosted Ritalin. I JUST GET SO EXCITED ABOUT THESE THINGS! One day I will come back and edit. Months later. I’m such a professional.

Sunday was a great day! We had the best weather of all three days (dry, sunny and warm!), a really great Lyft driver (Venus!) who dropped us off at alternate entrance which had NO LINE. And apparently the main gate hadn’t opened yet because there was practically no one inside. It was eerie and quiet. We had time to kill before any of the bands started, so we finally got some shopping in. I’m still daydreaming about all of the merch booths, to be honest. (Just to be clear, you know that anytime I say “to be honest,” everything else is a bold-faced lie, right?)

Interestingly, we noticed that the schedule for Sunday had been revised because a band had dropped off, so now there was a block of time for one of the smallest stages that just had three question marks in lieu of a band name. “WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!” I asked Henry, who gave me his standard IDGAF glare.

Our experiences at Riot Fest really couldn’t be any more diametrically opposed. It’s like comparing Julie Andrews spinning around in the hills of Saltzburg to Charlie Sheen in Platoon. How we work as a couple is a mystery.

The third and final day of Riot Fest was the one day were I didn’t have a ton of bands that I absolutely needed to see; there were really only three. But there were a few playing on the two smallest stages that I had a passing interest in, so we spent a large portion of the day in that area. This was also the most sparsely populated area, so Henry was extremely thankful. The bands playing on these two stages all day were mostly in the emo/indie category, if I’m forced to pigeon-hole them. It’s a sound that I really love, that No Sleep feel, so I wound up walking away with several new bands pinned to my heart. Loitering at those stages was like being at a mini Fest, which attending has been on my bucket list for years.

(Not Henry though. His review of basically every band we saw all weekend is “*shrug*” so I quit asking him to contribute to these posts.)

• Signals Midwest – Indie/punk band from Cleveland; they had a slight Balance & Composure feel to them, and I was down for it. Solid start to the day and a sneak peek of what the small stages had in store for us that day. I wish that all of the bands had their own merch booths there, like at Warped, because I would have for sure bought their record or a shirt.
  

• Foxtrott – I really am super picky when it comes to female-fronted bands. I don’t know what it is about me and the female voice, but we aren’t friends. However, on the drive from Pittsburgh, I looked up Foxtrott on Spotify and, while there was only one song on there, I actually liked it. When I saw that there was nothing else going on at the same time, I added them to the schedule in my Riot Fest app. (Isn’t technology strange? I barely remember the days where we’d scrawl set times on our hands at festivals. There actual schedules being handed out at the gate every day at Riot Fest, but if you programmed your own schedule into the app, you’d get fifteen-minute reminders to get your ass to a certain stage, and believe me — those were really convenient.)
  

Henry’s style icon during Foxtrott. He also had another style icon who looked like if a young Jeffrey Jones was a gym teacher in the 70s.

• Cayetana – Caught a minute of them because Signals Midwest gave them a shout out so I figured, sure, why not. Turns out they’re a girl band. What is my issue with girl bands?! I think it stems back to my strong adversity to 4 Non Blondes. (Sorry, Linda Perry. You just don’t do it for me.) Let Henry use the porta potty and then we split for the Riot stage.
  
• Kevin Devine – If you can believe it, this was actually Henry’s pick. I never really gave Kevin Devine a chance before (although I did briefly like his collab, Bad Books, with Andy Hull), so when Henry asked me who he was, I was just like, “I dunno, dude. A man who sings with a band.” He’s one of those guys whose music blends into the background for me, but we had nothing else pulling us in a different direction at that time, so we made the hike over to the main stage. And it was a great set! Totally one of those situations where I like a band better live. “Good call, Henry,” I said, giving him a hearty pat on the back. He just sneered at me. Like he does.

• Souvenirs – On the drive to Chicago, I was reading the bios of some of the bands I hadn’t heard of, and Souvenirs mentioned in theirs that they’re influenced by Sunny Day and Mineral. This was enough to get me to the Revolt stage at 2pm. My plan was to watch them for 15 minutes and then run to the main stage to see Hum, but they were so goddamn good that I wound up staying for almost the whole set and sacrificing the beginning of Hum. While we were at their stage, I got a Riot Fest alert saying clarifying the mysterious “???” addition to Sunday’s schedule: Taking Back Sunday were going to fill the slot! I thrust my phone into Henry’s face and even he admitted that it was cool. TBS on that small-ass stage? I consulted the schedule and saw that this conflicted with Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness. But TBS on a stage that small? Sorry, Andrew; can’t pass that one up.

• Hum – As a fan of shoegaze, once upon a time, I needed to see Hum. They were playing the main stage and while they sounded great, it was hard to engage in them because we weren’t very close. It definitely brought back some memories, but I definitely would have preferred to see them in a club venue. I feel like something got lost in translation out there midday, on such a large stage.
• New Politics – We watched two of their songs, but they were pretty bland, radio rock-sounding, and low-energy. Ditched them and went back to the two smaller stages, and thank god for  that because the band playing on the Revolt stage was much better.

• Modern Chemistry – Skipping out on New Politics proved very fortuitous because Modern Chemistry was way more my style. Also, it turned out that I was standing near them during Souvenirs set earlier, when I kept saying to Henry, “God, why can’t you dress like THOSE guys?!” Cling is currently my favorite song of theirs and I’m really anxious to see them again, hopefully soon.

• Taking Back Sunday – Thank god we had already been loitering around this stage, because once word spread about the surprise set, people fucking poured into that tiny area, which guaranteed hadn’t seen that much of a headcount all weekend. There really isn’t a way to describe seeing TBS on such a small stage with no frills, other than FUCKING AWESOME. Total Warped Tour vibes and honestly, I thought it was better than their headlining set. I don’t know many people in my demographic who don’t find certain nostalgia in this band. And there was something special about seeing them that day, all humble and #soblessed to be playing a second set in the middle of the day; it just intensified the feels and hearing those old songs (admittedly, I stopped following them after Louder Now) was such a goddamn throwback. I don’t need all the fancy lights — I just want to see Adam up close, swinging that fucking mic. “We are Riot Festing SO HARD this weekend,” he said at one point, and it was just really nice to see a band of that size and stature so into it and genuinely excited to be there. The crowd was great too and Henry actually said these 30 minutes (yes, they stayed within the 30 minute set time that was vacated!) was the highlight for him of the entire weekend.
  
  • Later on that afternoon, Henry nearly knocked me over when he excitedly pushed my shoulder and said, “LOOK LOOK LOOK!!! It’s Adam!” as Adam Lazzara casually strolled past us as we walking from the Riot Stage. It’s so amusing (and adorable) to me that he (unwittingly) knows so much about the scene that he can recognize people.

• Manchester Orchestra – Man, I kept telling Henry all weekend, “Just wait until you see Manchester. They are so goddamn good. You’re going to love them!” I have only seen them once before and it was one of those shows I attended with a pile of fake Mexican shit (akaex-BFF) so I generally try to block it from my mind. This particular show was in Cleveland, and Manchester was opening for Brand New. I was already a casual fan of theirs, but I remember being 100% blown away by their stage presence. Unfortunately, Christina and I started fighting pretty much right after their set ended, so the memory of this show is completely tarnished for me. It was such a terrible night that I didn’t even blog about it. Ugh. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to a do-over and because of this,Iwantedto be up front. They were playing on the main stage, but itwasstillearly-ish so it wasn’t impossible. I was at the barricade, off to the side (seriously, I can’t stress this enough—never underestimate the power of side-stage) and the girls I was standing next to were so fucking nice, itwasalmostconcerning. The one was obsessing over my finger tattoos and the other was admiring my jewelry and at one point I thought I might get mugged? But no, they were just really nice and added to the beauty of the Manchester Orchestra experience.
  • I haven’t seen pictures of them in awhile, so when the band came out, I was waiting and waiting for Andy Hull until some other guy who sounded exactly like Andy Hull began singing, and that’s when I realized that holy shit, Andy Hull lost a TON of weight.
  • They were just as excellent as I remembered.
    • Um, apparently not according to Henry, though. He had a major adverse reaction to them, to the point that he said it was literally the lowest point of the weekend for him and that he was almost falling asleep and that he hates them. We actually had a mild fight about it last week because I was pressing him for more details. I don’t CARE that he hates them, but I wanted to know WHAT exactly he hated. Andy’s voice? The songs?Theactual music? The fact that Andy made a mockery of Henry’s beloved industry by wearing a trucker hat when he clearly is not a trucker? But Henry was all, “I don’t know! Stop asking me! Don’t make me hate you, too!”Oooh, OK tough guy.
      • It didn’t help that when we were in Philly, Terri had the same questions because she too enjoys herself a little Manchester every now and then.

Cookie Time during Manchester.

• Superheaven – total 90s grunge vibe with these guys and I loved it. Again, those two small stages were killing it on Day Three. I didn’t get a chance to check out the line-up over there on the other days and I have much regret. There were a few bands that I already know and like who were playing there that I had to miss because Riot Fest just has way too much good shit going on at once, bands like Joyce Manor, Sleep On It*, Foxing, Knuckle Puck, and Have Mercy. That might be the biggest first world problem I’ve ever had.
  
  • FUN FACT: On Day Two, a group of guys walked past us early in the day, before any bands were playing, and one of the guys stood out to me. He was wearing a Fuck Seaway shirt and I suddenly had the urge to enthusiastically cry, “THAT’S SICK!” It dawned on me that it was the singer from Bonfires, who recently opened for The Spill Canvas. I excitedly texted my brother Corey about it and then I found out later that Sleep On It brought him out for a song, but of course I missed it.

• Beach Slang – I almost didn’t stick around for them. I’ve listened to them in passing and it was one of those “I don’t care either way” feelings. I definitely didn’t hate it, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. However, seeing them live flipped a switch inside my ears. They’ve got it all: musical ability, good songs, entertaining stage presence, a frontman who could be the next Charles Manson—he’s that effervescent and charismatic. I fell for them hard. HARD. After 30 seconds, Henry leaned in and said, “I’m gonna, um, move back a little and sit down,kbye” and I just murmured, “Yep” and then moved up closer. When James broke a string on his guitar, he tried to get their guitarist Ruben to do the Jonathan Davis beat box from “Freak on a Leash,” but Ruben was like, “No, I will not do that in front of these people” so then some guy in the crowd said that he could do it, and James let him come up to entertain us. It was pretty funny and props to that guy.
  • Also? James has the best, most adorable laugh of all time and I will definitely be seeing them again. THAT IS A THREAT, BEACH SLANG. I am going to come to your show and love you and then not talk to you, so there!
    • Not at all the music, but his voice reminds me a little of Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs) and Blair Shehan (Knapsack/The Jealous Sound <3).
    • Take all of my money.

• Airborne Toxic Event – Caught the end of their set on the main stage while waiting for Snoop. It was OK. I never really got into them much.
  
• SNOOP -Guys.SnoopDogg.Themotherfucking D-O-G.Doggystyle ruledmyfuckingLYFE in high school. My notebooksandfolderswere covered in Lodi Dodi lyrics and sketches of Snoop. My parents fucking hated this era. HATED. I was such a yo-girl, it was scary at times. And when Riot Fest announced that Snoop wouldbeperformingDoggystyle IN ITS ENTIRETY? Oh snap. We started out closer to the stage, probably around the area we were standing for Faith No More, but I got ridiculously paranoid. This was a much different crowd. Lots of former frat boys, drunk off their asses, high as fuck, looking to relive their youth. We still had about 20 minutesbeforeSnoopwas scheduled to come out and I was alreadyfeelingagitatedand also slightly concerned for my well-being. “Back, move back,” I shouted over the boisterous crowd to Henry. We ended up moving two more times before I finally felt safe and comfortable, and we were REALLY FAR back by then. But I didn’t give a fuck. I could enjoy it just fine back where we were. I really just wanted to know that I was in the same general vicinity of this rapper who was such a huge, defining part of my life. I know that sounds dramatic, maybe, and I wish I could force all of my old high school friends to weigh in on this (probablywithexhaustedsighs and annoyed eye rolls). Anyway, Airborne wrapped up their set on the neighboring Riot Stage and the Rock Stage lit up with green lights. And then…nothing. 7:45 came and went, still no Snoop. 8:00 came and the lights shut off. People started booing.Trashwas thrown on the stage. We waited and waited, for an announcement, something, anything. People started chanting his name. “I don’t think he’s coming,” I said wistfully to Henry. But we stuck around,justin case. And finally, around 8:15, the lights came back on and some DJ came on stage making some grand, flourishing introduction for Snoop, but then Lady of Rage came out instead and started performing Afro Puffs and those of us who weren’t drunk (definitely not the man in front of me) were like “The fuck?” This weird intro just went on and on, because clearly they were stalling, something was definitely happening behind the scenes. I started to get worried that we were going togetsomesecond rate,last minute MC in Snoop’s place, but then he finally came out, flanked by two gyrating dancers and someone dressed as a dog. It was NUTS. However! He didnotplayDoggystyle in its entirety, which was really disappointing. Especially when Drop It Like It’s Hot happened. I hate that song. But!Hedidperform Lodi Dodi and I am not afraid to admit that I cried and then buried my head in Henry’s shoulder. AndIrememberedall of the words, even though I honestly haven’t listened to that album since probably 1996.
  • He spent more time BS’ing on that stage, making big productions of smoking his weed, and was eventually told that he only had 3 minutes left. At this point, he had only performed for about 25 minutes and was supposed to have an hour set, but Riot Fest gave zero fucks that he got a late start. They weren’t going to let him go past 8:45, because Modest Mouse was ready to go on the Riot Stage. So he gets his 3-minute warning and flips the fuck out. I mean, he’s Snoop Dogg, so even when he was flipping out, he was still talking slower than Janna on a Sizzurp high. “Thesebitchassmotherfuckerstryna tell me that I only got three minutes left!Pssssssh, fuck that shit!” and he went on to allude to the fact that it was Riot Fest’s fault that he was late to begin with, and then told his security team to guard the monitors to make sure no one tried to unplug him. He had just finally startedtomoveonto a new track when BOOM, plug pulled. Riot Fest was not fucking around. Snoop’s stage completely shut off and Modest Mouse started playing on the Riot Stage. Right on time. The crowd collectively was like, “AW SHIT!” Who does that to Snoop!? It was hilarious, but it really did suck too because I was looking forward to seeing him all weekend.
    • Still, those 30 minutes were enough to resurrect a little bit of Yo-Girl Erin. Mostly though, it just made me crave Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, which I listened to the next day on the drive back to Pittsburgh. Henry was thrill-thrill-thrill-thrill-thrilled.

• Modest Mouse – I can’tevenpretendto be a Modest Mouse fan. I genuinely liked them in 2004 because it was hard not to. They were fresh-sounding. “Float On” was the jam. That was back when I was really into that type of music, like Death Cab and honestly pretty muchanythingonBarsuk. Riot Fest provides this magical, flower petal-lined path down my musical timeline and it is undeniably funtorevisitall of these old sounds that dominated so many formative stages of my life. We didn’t stick around for much of Modest Mouse, but just having them on my radar again inspired me to dig back into my archives for other old bands I used to listen to love around that same time, like The Prom, French Kicks, Now It’s Overhead, Kind of Like Spitting,TheNotwist, Ugly Casanova.AndobviouslyXiuXiu, but I never stopped listening to them.
  • Vintage feels, man. Vintage feels.

****************

I’m beyond depressed that it’s over. But I took so much away from the weekend. Imagine spending one day trudging along from stage to stage at a music festival when music isn’t really your jam. Now tack on two more days and think about how bad that must have sucked for Henry. I don’t know many people my own age who would think something like this is fun, let alone a 50-year-old. I gotta give props to Henry for doing this for me and for barely complaining. I’m going to admit to something GROSS, but we even held hands a lot. Probably because I was in such a state of euphoria that I had no idea what I was doing. But man, I love Henry. I couldn’t spend three intense days like that with anyone else. Thank you for making this whole weekend possible, for making sure I ate enough to survive, and for preventing me from getting lost in some random Chicago ‘hood. Adult supervision is a good thing in some cases. This was one. Henry, you da man.

Shows in general are so therapeutic and cathartic for me, so festivals like this are the equivalent of a lobotomy, I guess. I never realize how much stress I’m carrying and how many bad feels I’m internalizing until I leave a show and realize that I’m holding my head higher and gritting my teeth less. Music chases the bad noise out of my head. I know a lot of people reading this can relate, and if you can’t, just think about the thing in your life that gives you the most pleasure: watching movies, eating fancy food, 10-inch weeners on midgets.

It’s like that.

**********

Last night, I had a dream that my brother Corey was picking me up for work, but he couldn’t find my house. I was getting really pissed because how could he not know where I lived? He asked me to text him directions, so I sent him a map.

It was the map of Riot Fest. The fucking illustrated map of Riot Fest with all of the stages and the Ferris wheel and the bright green Douglas Park grass. Because in my dreams, that is where I live.

Saturday was a beautiful day: blue skies, in the low 60s, and the line to get in wasn’t as clusterfucked as Day One. We only stood for about 10 minutes before the gates opened and had plenty of time to roam before any bands started.

If I had to say one thing about Riot Fest (me? limited to one thing? can you imagine?) it would be this: It feels like your entire person is an excavation site and Riot Fest is digging up parts previously forgotten. Even a week later, I’m still letting music guide me down memory lane and it has been tremendous fun, if not eye-opening to how much much things have really changed. Some of those bands, good Lord, I haven’t listened to them in 10+ years, and the memories and feelings that came over me were overwhelming – most in good ways. These weren’t necessarily old wounds being torn open, but just some decent feels having the dust brushed off. Although it did make it even more evident that 2004 is a time in my life that could use some more healing. Watching some of these bands, like the Dear Hunter for instance, made me ask myself why I ever stopped listening to them in the first place. And I can’t remember. Other than the fact that there is just so much music to listen to and some bands just inevitably fall through the cracks. That felt like the theme for Saturday though; all of these bands that I was so excited to see even though I haven’t listened to any of them in years.

Seriously though, I’m going to try to be brief for real this time. Wish me luck.

• Chon: We recently saw these guys open for Circa Survive a few months ago, so I threw Henry a bone and told him we could skip them. They were the main stage openers though, so I at least got to still hear them while we stocked up on food tickets and bought some deep dish, which we ate like Fat Americans At a Concert while watching….
  
• The Ataris – I have never really given a shit about them, not because I think they suck or anything, just because I never really bothered and no one has ever tried to force them on me, either. I did think it was kind of odd that they were playing so early, but what do I know. They were playing on the Roots stage, which had slight hills on either side of it, so Henry and I stood on one of those while eating our pizza. Because, Fat Americans At a Concert. (Seriously though, if there is one thing I really don’t like, it’s eating at shows. I think it’s weird and kind of disrespectful to stand there shoving food in your face while a band is playing. But we were just trying to get it out of the way because there was a long day of stage-hopping ahead of us. So, we joined the douchebag masses and fed our faces.) “Did he change his hair?” Henry asked. “What? Who?” I replied, which always comes out as a frantic yell while I whip my head from side to side, looking for what, I don’t know. “The singer for the Ataris,” Henry said, pointing at the stage. LIKE I KNOW?! The Ataris could sit next to me on the trolley and I would have no idea it was them. Why is Henry so concerned with band hair?! (Never forget: Sceney Todd.) Then they played their “Boys of Summer” cover and I was like, “Oh yeah. Them.”
• The Dear Hunter – Another band that I used to really love and then inexplicably stopped following. I’ve seen them once before, when they opened for Thrice in 2009, but it was at a really annoying venue and the experience wasn’t optimum. But at Riot Fest, the crowd was fantastic and I could see perfectly because it was the stage with the tiny hills and the crowd wasn’t too large yet. Henry asked, “Who are these guys now?” and that’s basically my favorite question because then I can start rambling useless facts and playing connect-the-dots with other bands (“The singer is Casey Crescenzo and he was also in The Receiving End of Sirens, remember when I loved them, and you know who else was in TREOS? BRIAN SOUTHALL do you even know who BRIAN SOUTHALL is well he basically wrote the entire Isles and Glaciers EP, so go suck a dick, Henry.” And that’s how it goes.) The Dear Hunter was exceptional, but my favorite part, maybe even in my Top 5 moments of the entire weekend, was when the guy next to Henry offered him a joint. Father NARC politely declined and I lost it; Henry was so annoyed, but if I hadn’t laughed with abandon, my cheeks would have holes in them right now from when the force of my pent-up laughter ripped right through like giddy cannonballs.

• Gwar – I mean…I associate Gwar with my ex-boyfriend Psycho Mike and I usually try to avoid them, but this time I was like, “Fuck it, we’ve got some time.” I still don’t like their music, but their performance was mildly entertaining. The only song I knew was “Meat Sandwich” because I’m a poser.
• The Movielife – YES! I was really looking forward to this one, because the Movielife haven’t been together since…2003? Someone help me out here and Google for me; I’m tired. I wasn’t a rabid fan, but I have always liked Vinnie Carauna (he was the main reason I got into Set Your Goals back in 2009) and I Am The Avalanche, so this was a must-see for me. And they fucking brought it! Vinnie looked so happy and the camaraderie within the band seemed great. It was basically one massive singalong while Henry stood there, squinting at his phone, looking at a visual history of the Ataris’ hairstyles.
  

• Dead Milkmen – My friend Bill texted me that morning and said, “Please tell me you’re going to see Dead Milkmen today” and I was like “BILL. YOU KNOW IT.” I’m by no means a huge fan, but this is one of those bands that I used to always hear my BFF Christy’s older brother talking about when we were kids. I’ve always considered this a “big brother” type of band because of that, and it always made me sad that I didn’t have my old big brother who was teaching me about good music. (I mean, I actually do have an older brother, but I didn’t find out about him until I was 19, so…) Then in 8th grade, I had a pen pal from Seattle who used to make me mixtapes and she too loved the Dead Milkmen. I felt like I owed it to my youth to be at the Rock Stage for their set that afternoon, and I’m so glad I was, because they were wonderful, and the crowd was great. I love festivals like this because they give me the opportunity to see bands that I normally wouldn’t see at a club show. My favorite part was when Joe went off on a tangent about hipsters and how he couldn’t believe that Riot Fest was making the Damned and Echo and the Bunnymen play in daylight, all of the hipster bands should be playing those slots because hipsters love the sun and gentrification and riding their bicycles and opening trendy popsicle stands—and it was all true. Every last word of it, and I was laughing so hard because fuck a hipster. I just want to be able to walk into a coffee shop and order a cup of coffee without some asshole with stupid hair, wearing a scarf in summer judging me. I originally planned on leaving their set early to run over and catch the end of Babes In Toyland on the Rebel Stage, but the Dead Milkmen were just too much fun. Even Henry was like, “Yeah” when I said, “Wasn’t that awesome?”

• Desaparecidos – Early-20s Erin pissed her pants when she saw this band on the Riot Fest announcement. Henry was like “Who?” and I snottily yelled, “DON’T YOU REMEMBER THEM?! CONOR OBERST’S SIDE PROJECT FROM WAY BACK IN THE DAY!?” and he was like “Nope, but thanks for essentially giving me the heads up that I’m going to hate them.” I used to love Bright Eyes before it was hipster to love Bright Eyes, before Winona Ryder dated Conor Oberst, before your mom came home from Whole Foods with her hemp satchel stuffed with organic Diva Cups and kale and started telling you about the haunting song she heard at the check-out counter, but JOKE’S ON ME YOU GUYS because just admitting to any of this is basically publicly outing myself as a secret hipster. But seriously, who cares. I is for everyone and Bright Eyes is the shit and at one point in my life, they were everything to me. Actually, the Saddle Creek record label had me eating out of their hands back then. I loved Cursive (still do) and Now It’s Overhead and AZURE RAY! Goddamn, I was a different person back then! And Desaparecidos was one of those bands. I loved them because I hated George W. Bush and their music was smart and political—they were on my side, and not on Henry’s; I used to be smug about that. (I know, it’s hard to imagine.) I never had the chance to see them back in 2002, so I was READY. This was one of those times when Henry mumbled about going to get a beer and then he never came back. But that was OK — I was fine because I was amongst my people. And Jesus Christ, Desa fucking went hard. I forgot how much I loved that beautiful Midwestern emo sound. And seeing Denver Dalley brought back such memories! I struggled all weekend to remember the name of the band he used to be in, and I was determined not to google that shit. “Remember we saw them at Club Cafe? Now It’s Overhead opened for them?” I kept pressing Henry. “Nope,” he’d answer disinterestedly. “His band name had something to do with math. Not Subtraction….” Then, late Sunday night, I shouted from my side of the bed, “Statistics!!! It was Statistics.” Henry was like, “No one cares.” But I digress, seeing this band was amazing. Seeing Conor Oberst was amazing. Being so close was amazing. Life was just amazing that day. All days. LIFE FUCKING RULES. CHOOSE LIFE. FOREVER AND EVER. KUMBAYA AND JAMBALAYA.
• Echo and the Bunnymen – Seriously, fucking Echo and the Bunnymen. I got to hear “Lips Like Sugar” live – another bucket list item. I would have liked to have been closer for them, and also to have stayed for their whole set, but remember when I mentioned in my Day One post that there were three bands that were the Big Draws for me? Well, the third one was about to start during Echo’s set.

Saw this bro’s cat shirt and tried to ask him where he got it but he was so fucking high, his answer was covered in drool and question marks. So his friend was like “I BOUGHT IT FOR HIM. I SAW IT IN A STORE. I BOUGHT THE SHIRT AT A SHIRT. CATS.” Wow, thanks guy. Luckily, I posted it on Instagram and one of my friends said Urban Outfitters sells it, but I guess that was like, so last season because it’s not in stock anymore. SORRY CHOOCH, I TRIED.

• Alexisonfire: Fucking fuck fuck fuck.  This is the band, out of all the bands that weekend, that walked away with my heart. I listened to them heavily from around 2005-2007, but I never got to see them live. A thing that you should know about that time in my life is that I was unemployed for most of it, and then pregnant, then I had the thing (a/k/a Chooch) and then I worked from 4pm-midnight. So I was either poor, pregnant, figuring out how to be a mom, and then working shitty hours; all of this is to illustrate how infrequently I was going to shows back then. It was near impossible, and I had to be very choosy with what shows I did go to because $$$. Not surprising, I was extremely depressed during these days too. Major correlation there. When I was working the job with the horrible hours, Alexisonfire used to come up a lot on my Zen and I just loved them because I had some aggression, one might say. This was around the time I was really starting to get into post-hardcore more exclusively, and would soon discover Chiodos, which just changed my whole world, musically. Alexisonfire was right there in the middle of it, so I was really anxious to see them last weekend, especially because they haven’t toured in ages (Dallas’s main gig is now City & Colour, and Wade fronts Gallows). I got up as close I could, near the barricade on the right side (that’s my sweet spot at shows; never estimate the side of the stage) and Henry was like, “I’m gonna….” and then ran away. Which is fine, because sometimes I prefer to be alone during these times.  I mean, I knew I was experiencing some level of excitement while waiting for them to start, but what I hadn’t anticipated was the grip they were about to have on me. The feelings and emotions that came over me as soon as they started playing was inexplicable…and also maybe a little concerning. I was crying and losing my mind, quickly remembering just how much I used to like them and knowing that this was all out of my control — I was about to walk away from that stage TRIPLE liking them. It was nuts how many of those songs I haven’t heard in about 10 years, but the words came right back to me. I like City & Colour just fine, but Dallas Green was born to sing in Alexisonfire. From the moment he opened his mouth, I could barely breathe, and George was a fury of testosterone on that stage, and by the end of the set, he had bent the mic stand around his neck, folded it in half, jumped on it, and then folded it again. I was inspired to do the same thing, using Henry’s neck though. “So are they like a big deal or something?” one of the security guys asked the girl next to me, watching the crowd lose their shit. “Oh god, yeah,” she laughed. “And it’s because they haven’t toured in a really long time.” He nodded but you could tell he was like, “The fuck.” One of Henry’s friends, I guess. It’s crazy how something just clicked; all those times I listened to them years ago, I liked them so much but not like this. Not on this level. They blew me away and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since, constantly playing them while I get ready for work, in the car, in my head, relearning all of the nuances and split second parts that make my heart flop. After their set that day, I slowly walked back to Henry, who was standing far back not near anyone, looking distressed and angry at what he had just been subjected to. “CHILLS” I shouted to him, and he rolled his eyes. I need to see them again. Immediately.
  • My co-worker Aron likes to keep tabs on me via Instagram and then he’ll walk by and casually namedrop something I’ve posted on there, just to prove that he’s in the know. So on Tuesday, my first day back to work after the glorious weekend, he came over and said, “So Alexisonfire, huh? SO GOOD, RIGHT?” I agreed and then said, “But….just so you know, it’s ‘Alexis On Fire,'” because he pronounced it ‘Alex Is On Fire’ — a common error! “Goddammit, are you serious?!” he asked in defeat, and it was so funny. Poor Aron, he tries.
    • When they played “This Could Be Anywhere In The World,” I sincerely I was going to cry my big ugly face off and I am CRYING RIGHT NOW just thinking about it. (Also, back when I liked them years ago, I always wanted to sing “The city is burning” instead of “the city is haunted” and I was doing the exact same thing last Saturday during this song. Old habits.
      • Honestly, I just want to delete everything else in this post and replace it with every last Alexisonfire video I can find on YouTube. I am smitten. LIKE A MITTEN.
        • ON A FUCKING KITTEN.

Setlist

1. Accidents
2. Boiled Frogs (<3)
3. Old Crows
4. The Northern
5. We Are the Sound
6. .44 Caliber Love Letter
7. Dogs Blood
8. Drunks, Lovers, Sinners, and Saints
9. This Could Be Anywhere In the World
10. Young Cardinals
11. Happiness By the Kilowatt

I had my fingers crossed for “You Burn First” but it’s ok — they made up for it by playing 12 other songs that I wanted to hear. 

Can I go back to last Saturday now or….?

• Drive Like Jehu – Post-hardcore is one of my favorite music genres, a real close tie with 1980s synthpop for first place. And DLJ are veritable grandfathers of that scene at this point, so there was no way I was missing them. The crowd for them at the Rebel stage was pretty dismal, and definitely older. This was another big deal because they broke up in 1995, and only recently reunited last year, but have only played a handful of west coast shows. I had to, had to, had to see them. Also, their drummer is Mark Trombino, who has produced some of the greatest records (like goddamn Jimmy Eat World, for Christ’s sake) and admittedly, I was hoping that there would be booth for his donut company, Donut Friend. I AM OBSESSED WITH DONUT FRIEND! Their donuts are named after emo/punk/hardcore bands! Custard Front Drive! Drive Like Jelly! Fudgegazi! They could taste like dog shit for all I know, I’d still buy them all because music. (I got to see Drive Like Jehu live! What is this life.)

• Billy Idol – A few months ago, “Eyes Without a Face” came on my bedroom radio and I said out loud to the monster under my bed how much I would like to see Billy Idol live one day. I mean, it’s Billy Idol. And then because I said it, my under-the-bed monster made it so. (With a little help from some warm virgin blood and Faygo Moon Mist.)  Billy headlined the Rock Stage and when the monitors weren’t completely cutting out, he sounded fantastic. But there were some major, disappointing sound issues happening. Still, the crowd was great and it was basically the only performance that Henry and I were both looking forward to all weekend, so it was a nice, bonding moment and I think we held hands for a minute or two. And then, “Eyes Without A Face”! Gah, the childhood memories. This song, and “Drive” by The Cars are two 80s ballads that make my arm-hairs rise and my idiot heart fold in half. (OK, fine: “Is This Love?” by Whitesnake, too.)

• Taking Back Sunday: After Billy Idol was over, Taking Back Sunday was ready to headline the Roots stage. They were one of the second night headliners last year too, and I had deja vu as my teeth chattered and my feet froze into blocks of boot-shaped ice. We didn’t even attempt to get close to the stage for them, opting instead to stand back where the crowd was less dense. I promised Henry we could leave after a few songs, because he’s 50, you guys. He needs rest. I really wanted to hear “MakeDamnSure” before we left, but alas. Normally, I would pout about something like this, but the whole entire day was….I almost said made of win. Who even says that anymore.

Meanwhile, people were near death behind us at the Riot stage, where System of a Down was headlining. I watched some videos and read a lot of online accounts and “horrifying” is the only word that comes to mind. A lot of it had to do with the muddy conditions, but it sounds like the incident was in large part due to obnoxious, drunk, overzealous and disrespectful fans. I love festivals, you know I love Warped Tour to death, but this is shit you almost never see in a club show. (Or, for that matter, Warped Tour. You know why? Most of the people there are underage!) I feel like festivals bring out thousands of people who just don’t really go to real shows, and they don’t know how to act. People were falling into mud because the crowd wouldn’t stop pushing, even before SOAD came out, causing a domino effect until there were dog piles of people in the mud, unable to get up and some unable to breathe. By the time SOAD started playing, they apparently had to stop their set at least three times to allow paramedics to literally SAVE PEOPLE FROM DYING. This is why I won’t put myself that close to the stage like that in festival settings. Pack mentality scares the FUCK out of me. I love music, I love shows, I love supporting my bands, but I also love being alive. Some of the things I read on Reddit were horrifying, the way some people were treated, literally being pushed over and stood on, having their faces shoved into the mud, breathing in that dirty water and absolutely thinking they were going to die.

Nope. That’s not for me. Not at 36, not even at 21. I think the most scared I ever was at a festival was at the Rolling Rock Town Fair in 2001. You want to talk about a football field full of wasted, aggressive nu-metal-loving frat boys? Good lord, I thought that whole field was going to burn. Every time I see footage of the Reading, Leeds, or Glastonbury festivals, my chest feels so tight. I just don’t think I could ever do a festival that size.

Nope. Riot Fest is probably as large as I’ll go. And that’ll be over there, standing off to the side, thanks.

System of a Down aside, the whole day was one majestic moment after the next, ending with the best Lyft driver of the entire week, Bobby, who was hilarious and candid, hates No Doubt, and gave us an off-the-cuff tour of the Chicago outskirts the whole back to our hotel. Bobby was the fucking shirt, and as I rolled out of his car, I drunkenly told him he was the best Lyft driver of my life, and I wasn’t even DRUNK.

I have been on the verge of combustion all week because all I want to do is talk about the weekend but I’m trying not to be annoying (Henry is reading this, feeling puzzled right now. “Trying not to be annoying?”) Riot Fest, these things that you do to me. I can’t even.

[disclaimer: my blog keeps smashing words together after I hit publish; that’s not actually me trying to form post hardcore band names out of everyday sentences.]

We were duped by Riot Fest again. They said “Gates open at 11, guys!” and we fell for it. Our Lyft driver, Bobby (he asked us to tell him things about Pittsburgh and he definitely doesn’t want a Primanti’s sandwich, guys), got us there promptly at 11, only for us to stand in line for 90 MINUTES. Why you do this, Riot Fest? Why so mean? Aside from having a musical know-it-all standing behind us (talking about Gwar like he didn’t know Oderus died, though) and then being rained on for 30 minutes, it wasn’t the worst line I’ve ever stood in.

But then the lines started moving and we were one of the first 50 to be let in. It’s so strange being there that early, before any of the stages are bumpin’, none of the food vendors are ready, and people are just roaming around aimlessly in an attempt to familiarize themselves with the grounds.

This was the first year for Douglas Park to host the festival. When Riot Fest started 10+ years ago, it was actually just a bunch of shows split up around different venues of Chicago. It was only within the last 4 or so years that it became the sizable festival that it is today. Since 2012, it was held in Humboldt Park, but after last year, Humboldt Park was like, “Hell to the no,” so the organizers were forced to move it to nearby Douglas Park. Douglas is smaller than Humboldt, so the layout had the stages closer together. A lot of people were complaining about this, but I kind of liked that it was easier to run from stage to stage — last year, two of the stages were so far apart from each other, god help you if you were trying to split your time between the two of them. Henry and I practically walked the soles off our boots last year. It was a lot more hectic and the I’M GONNA BE LATE sensation that I’m so susceptible to really put a damper on my fun at times.

I’m tightly wound. And I have found that I describe myself this way so often, that it’s got to be a future tattoo.

First thing we did once we got through the gates was sign up to be bone marrow donors, which involved having the inside of our cheeks swabbed, so that was an unusual way to start things off, but you know me, such philanthropy.

“Does it hurt, donating bone marrow?” I asked Henry after we walked away with our BONE MARROW DONOR cards.

Henry just smirked at me. “Uh, yeah.”

Fuck.

In an effort to dial back the amount of information I’m tempted to cram down the Internet’s throat, I am going to now make a list of the bands that we saw on Day One, even if it was just a partial set, and then briefly (LOL, what’s that word mean?) talk about the highlights. EVERYSINGLETHING! It was all a highlight! OK, but really. I’m going to try to do this. Henry’s comments/thoughts/reviews are indented.

Bands We Saw On Friday

• Coathangers –  I really am not a fan of girl bands. Luckily, we were just strolling past while they were christening the main stage.
• Into It. Over It. – I’ve wanted to see them for quiet some time so I was excited that this would be the first band of the day for us. Henry was not impressed. My favorite part was when Evan stopped playing a few notes into a song and said, “No. Fuck that. You people paid a lot of money to be here and I’m not playing this song out of fucking tune” before starting over. Respect.
  • I don’t remember.

• Real Friends – I missed them at Warped Tour in July, but was like, “It’s fine, they’ll be at Riot Fest, so…” but then their set overlapped with Mariachi El Bronx, so I only got to stick around for two songs before running to the Roots stage for a Mexican dance party.
  • We’re not real friends. At all.
• Mariachi El Bronx!! – God, I love this band! It’s literally the mariachi side project of the Bronx, a band that I used to really love but admittedly haven’t listened to in a while. I saw Mariachi El Bronx once at Warped Tour years ago and they stole my gringo heart. Even Henry smiled a little bit. Go listen to them if you’re having a bad day or so hungry that you’re not sure what you want to eat. 
  • Nope.

• Bayside – I don’t care how many times I have seen them, I can never miss an opportunity to hear my heart breaker jam “Don’t Call Me Peanut.” Chooch used to love that song when he was younger and would sing it quietly from the backseat, so I got all sad-eyed and missed him a ton during their set. I was a late-comer to the Bayside scene and never really bothered with them until 2009 when I saw Anthony Ranieri on the Where’s the Band? tour, which also featured Chris Conley, Matt Pryor, and Dustin Kensrue. What a fucking lineup of heart-eye emojis before heart-eye emojis existed. That’s one show I would love to relive. Anyway, Anthony ended up winning my idiot heart that day and I have been a Bayside fan ever since, but I still feel likean00b every time I’m in that crowd.  Anyway, go listen to Bayside. It’s like being hugged by someone you don’t mind touching.
  • It’s a band.

• Every Time I Die: I always, always, always miss this damn band every time they play Warped. But not on this day,motherfuckers. We got a good spot near the side and Henry was like, “Who are these guys again?” and seemed pretty relaxed during the intro where they played the theme to Perfect Strangers, like it wasgoingto be a bunchofBalkiBartokomouses andCousinLarrys playing chill 1980s sitcom scores on mandolins. But then Keith Buckley and crew came storming out andHenrysighed. I really liked what I heard/saw butmyactual highlight of their set has nothing to do with the music — we were standing right next to the press gate so after a few songs, a throng of photographers came filing out. I happened to glance at one of them and realized that she looked super familiar. “I think that’s Ashley Olson!” I shouted into Henry’s face. “WHO?!” he asked. I just rolled my eyes because he is so old and dumb and this just proves that he clearly never listens to me when I talk about my interests. Anyway, Ashley is one of the best up-and-coming music photographers I have seen lately. I started noticing her last year when she was on tour with Chiodos, because Craig Owens would always regram her photos and they were stunning. And I never use the word “stunning.”I’ve been following her on Instagram ever since, and her Warped Tour photos this summer just blew my mind. Plus, she has good taste in bands, so. She ended up walking away and I regretted notsayinghi to her. (I even double-checked on Instagram to make sure it was her, and her most recent post was from Riot Fest, so I figured that was a pretty good sign, haha.) Halfway through ETID’s set, she came back! She was standing in front of me for a minute, getting in some more shots, and then she retreated. The guy she was with was still standing in front of me, talking to someone, so she was just hanging back, waiting for him. I really dislike approaching people because I get so awkward and creepy, but I said to Henry, “Ok, I’m going in…” and dove right the fuck into Small Talk Ocean. And it went, well, swimmingly! (God, my writing skills just slay.) I thought it was going to be a “hi/bye” type of transaction, but we ended up having a nice, meaningful chat for several minutes, during which she hugged me TWICE, and said that she had noticed me earlier because I was wearing my (ugh, Chooch’s) Emarosa “For Fox Sake” shirt. So we chatted about how wonderful those guys are and I said, “My 9-year-old son met Bradley this summer at Warped—” Ashley cut me off to say, “You do NOT have a 9-year-old son.” I laughed and said, “I do! I’m 36!” and she was genuinely surprised and kept saying, “NO YOU’RE NOT!” I enjoyed the moment because I know my extended youth is fleeting and these days are slipping through my fingers. I’m reminded of this every time I look in the mirror and see more gray hairs and deeper bags under my eyes. Ashley gave me a sticker and we tookaselfie. “That’s really cute!” she said when I showed her, and asked me to tag her in it so she could save it. I think I’m getting better at talking to strangers! I’ll be kidnapped any day now. 
  • It all runs together after awhile.

Henry was like, “You and all your weird Instagram crushes” when I excitedly showed him the picture. I was happy that he didn’t come with me when I was talking to her because who brings their dad to Riot Fest, you know?

• Coheed & Cambria: Heard part of their set while roaming around. I used to really like them when they first came onto the scene but then I stopped for no real reason. Their drummer is a douchebag on Twitter, that much I know; tweeting shitty things to Jonny Craig’s ex-fiancee and it’s like, “Why do you care? Don’t you have some lame hip hop rhymes to lay down?”

• THRICE: You know how your elderly Uncle Milton is always telling the same stale-ass war story every time you sit down at the kids table to eat fucking figgy pudding, supposing you live inside a Christmas carol? Well, just call me Uncle Milt because DID YOU KNOW THAT MY KID IS NAMED AFTER THE DRUMMER IN THRICE? Well he is. It’s true. (His real name is Riley,btw.) And I am contractually obligated to mention that every single time I write on my blog about Thrice, or text someone about Thrice, or hear the song Three Times a Lady by Lionel Richie. CHOOCH WILL LOSE HIS NAME IF I DON’T. And then that fucker Bastion from Never-ending Story will have to give him a new one and it’ll be something stupid. Like Chooch.Ok Ok Ok, let’s reel it back in here for a second. Thrice is one of my all-time favorite bands and I won’t get too whiny about it because there are definitely more than one lengthy post in the archives about my love for them, so I will give you the truncated version: The last time I saw them was in 2009 and then they went on hiatus and everyone was like WILL THRICE EVER COME BACK!? They played a show (one show) a few months ago and I knew, I just fucking knew, that they were going to be announced for this year’s Riot Fest and I was fucking right because I spend way too much time analyzing this shit. There were three bands that were announced last May for Riot Fest that made me fall to my knees and beg Henry, and Thrice was one. I was fucking giddy all day, but then right before their set, my stomach got all knotted and my eyes got all moist and sting-y, and I knew I was in for it. Yep, I cried for most of their set—which was SO FUCKING GOOD and it alone was worth the drive to Chicago. Crowd was great and really into it and it felt sogoodto be there in the middle of it all. My connection with Thrice is on another level. Like some spiritual shit. This Riot Fest moment was brought to you by some strong 2003 feels.
  • They’re ok.

Those clouds, tho. Thrice was literally bringing Heaven down to earth. OH YEAH, I WENT THERE.

• Faith No More: Friends. This is the top reason I had to go to Riot Fest. Faith No More is one of the few bands that I never grew out; they’ve stuck with me through every musical phase I’ve gone through, from gangsta rap to synthpop. I was in middle school when I first heard Midlife Crisis (back when it was cool to discover new music on MTV!) and it was the first “heavy” band that appealed to me and I was like OMG someone take me to the mall right this instant so I can buy thatfuckingcassingle (which I still have!). I can’t say that they were a gateway band for me though, because they were literally the only metal-type band that I liked until junior year when I became a closet Marilyn Manson aficionado. Naturally,FNM would go on  to break-up before I ever had the chance to see them, so that sucked. (I did get to see Mike Patton’s sideprojectFantomas though, in 2000…or 2001?) As 7:45 approached, I started to freak the fuck out—I was so giddy and excited and probably super annoying forHenryto be around. (I mean,moreso.)FNM was headlining the second main stage, so there was a huge crowd there. We got a decent spot on the right side, andIwas relieved that there weren’t anydrunkdouchebags around us. Everyone was cool and excited, if not a little disappointed that they were only given an hour to play. But for someone who had never seen them before that night, an hour felt like a fucking gift. I thought it was fantastic — they sounded great, they played most everything I wanted to hear (unpopular opinion, but I REALLY like “Stripsearch” and would have maybe fainted if they played it), obviously MIDLIFE CRISIS. Just hearing Mike Patton’s otherworldly voice traveling across that park gave me chills. I have chills again just writing about it. Also, it wasreallychilly. This was definitely one of the Top 3 moments of the weekend for me, and I just kept murmuring, “That was so fucking amazing.” I need to invent some new adjectives to use when talking about music because “amazing” just doesn’t cut it anymore. The only downside was when Mike Patton told everyone to snap their fingers. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SNAP MY FINGERS,MIKEPATTON!
  • They were good.

Setlist, according to the Internet (it looks right to me):

1. Motherfucker
2. Be Aggressive
3. Caffeine
4. Evidence
5. Epic
6. Black Friday
7. Midlife Crisis
8. Gentle Art of Making Enemies
9. Easy
10. Separation Anxiety
11. Ashes to Ashes
12. Superhero
13. Introduce Yourself

I still can’t believe No Doubt got to play longer than Faith No More. I mean, I can, because Americans have a knack for making mediocre bands rise above the good ones. But, THAT’S A POST FOR ANOTHER DAY, SMILY FACE.

• Ice Cube: Immediately after FNM ended, the main stage to the left came to life and I couldn’t get out of that area fast enough because — No Doubt. Words cannot express how much I dislike that band and Gwen Stefani. And maybe I’m biased, but holy shit they sounded atrocious. Not just her cat-in-heat voice, but the whole band. I know, I’m full of the unpopular opinions tonight. That band just gets under my skin for some reason that I can’t explain; it’s not even like I associate them with bad memories or anything. They just have never sounded pleasant to my particular ears. I remember in high school when No Doubt was playing at Starlake and pretty much every fucking female I knew went to that show, regardless of how much they liked them, if at all. I was like “Lol, nope,” stayed home and listened to Spanish gangsta rap, probably. Anyway, back to 2015: Henry and I finally made it across the park to the Roots stage, where Ice Cube was about to headline. I had no fucking qualms with Bye Felicia’ing No Doubt in favor of Ice Cube. I was never even really a big Ice Cube fan, but my inner Yo Girl was definitely curious to see his set, which to be honest was mostly one long commercial for Straight Outta Compton, but it was high-energy, he sounded great, and the crowd was fucking going nuts. There were people climbing trees, trying to get a better view. His special guests were his son, MC Ren, and Yella. Some people were speculating that it was going to be Dr. Dre, and if I had been one of those people, I would have stayed for the whole set to find out. But I was pretty confident that Dre wasn’t going to show up to perform for an hour on a stage that wasn’t even the main one. So we left after I got to hear Check Yo Self, which I have to admit, was pretty fucking cool.

Douglas Park didn’t have any lights so if you weren’t close to a stage, good luck. There was lots of stumbling and stepping in invisible mud pits on the way to the exit, and then a long walk into the sketchier area of the neighborhood, looking for the designated Lyft pick-up area, which is one of the reasons I could never go to Riot Fest alone: there are too many things you have to know about! Too many logistics! Thank god Henry looks into all of this or I’d probably be sleeping on a bench in Douglas Park right now instead of blogging in my dining room.

So, impromptu props to Papa H for getting me there and back all three days with absolutely no incident.

***

We got back to our shitty hotel after a pleasant ride with a Lyft driver (“You were really talkative with tonight’s Lyft driver; you must be hammered,” Henry observed, to which I clarified that I was not hammered from the ONE Strongbow I drank eight hours earlier, but that it was because I thought the driver was cute, duh) and I collapsed onto the bed and cried, “TONIGHT WAS FUCKING AWESOME.”

Then we fell asleep to Jaws, which was also on when we left earlier that morning, too.

GOD, EVERYTHING WAS SO PERFECT THAT DAY.

As if you don’t know by now what Henry looks like at his most irritated and put-upon, here are a series of Henry bombs (I lied—some are straight-on shots that he knew about and was probably saying STOP as I was taking them). I haven’t done a Henry Bombs post in awhile because like everything else in my life, I lost interest.   

The “Day One, Band One, WTF am I Watching Right Now?” shot. This was during Into It. Over It. I thought they were lovely. Henry thought, well, his face says it all. 
  

The “Maybe If I Look For Ted Nugent on the Band Lineup For The 3rd Time, He’ll Show Up” shot. 

The “Professionally Giving Some French Broad Directions In The Fancy Econo Lodge Parking Lot & Then Spent the Rest of the Day Imagining Her French Kissing Me As Payment” shot. 

   
 The “I’ve Had A Lot Of Beers, Can’t Maintain The Frown, Whatever Band This Is Sucks But I Can’t Get My Face To Reflect That Sentiment! FROWWWWWN COMMMMMME BAAAAACK!” shot. 

The “Just Chillin’ With The Homie Yelawolf; He Probably Hates Manchester Orchestra, Too” shot. 
  

The “When Manchester Orchestra Is So Boring, I Make Origami With My Empty Beer Cup & That’s When I Know It’s Time For Another” shot. 

The “Hey I’m Gonna Get Another Beer Before I Finish This One So I Can Doublefist My Way To Oblivion While You Watch This Shitty Band That Sounds Like That Last Shitty Band On That Other Stage We Just Walked A Mile From & Then Maybe I’ll Buy a Beanie From the Stheart Booth So That I’ll Look More Like One Of Those Post Hardcore Boys You Like So Much” shot. 
  

The “Calculating How Much Beer Money Will I Have Left If I Pay Someone From the Hellzapoppin’ Circus to Set My Ears On Fire So I Don’t Have To Listen To Snoop Dogg Tonight” shot. 

The “Quick Gimme a Mirror, ‘Bloody Nugent, Bloody Nugent, Bloody Nugent'” shot. 
  

The “Nope, Nothing Sounds Better While Sitting” shot. 

The “Having My Head Adjusted After Going Hard In the Thrice Pit; Just Kidding, It’s Only My Afternoon Grooming” shot. 
 

The “Do We Really Need To Stand So Close For Every Time I Die? I Feel Very Unsafe” shot. 

  The “I Bet If I Had a Car This Bitchin’ IRL, I Could Bag a Woman More My Speed, Someone Who’d Be Content With Watching a Cheap Trick Cover Band At The Corner Bar Once a Year” shot. 

The “Thinking Of All the NCIS Marathoning I Could Be Doing This Weekend, But Instead I Had To Put On Pants Just to Have My Ears and Wallet Violated” shot. 

The “Shoulda Stayed in THE SERVICE” shot. 

The “I Hope She Spills That Fucking Coffee, McDonald’s-style” shot. 

The “FIRST IN LINE FOR MORNING BEER!!!!” shot. 
 The “Oh Ho, We’re Not Friends, Please Find A New Boyfriend Before We Go Home Today—Wait, WE STILL HAVE ANOTHER DAY?!” shot. 

Well, we just went to get breakfast at the FANTASTIC Econo Lodge ($69 a night, friends!) only to see some girl in her early 20s, wearing unstrapped overalls and a tube top thing (are we still calling them tube tops in 2015, or has Urban Outfitters given them a more hipster-approved title? Like Uberband? Post-tube? Totesbandeau? Rackshizz? Lena Dunham’s Boob Thong?), standing near the food with some older lady who was saying, “This is not right, this is a food area” and then the girl said, “I need help” and the lady said, “THEN I WILL CALL THE POLICE” and I noticed the younger girl was holding a clump of hair and looked like she was probably high on meth.

I mumbled, “Oh. Nope,” and Henry and I spun on our heels in tandem and came back to the room.

That being said, IT’S LIVEBLOGGING TIME. Just a warning: my phone LOVES to autocorrect my blog posts when I’m not looking so I can’t be held responsible for any ludicrous typos. Just the normal ones. You know how bad I am at GRAMMAR. (Seriously. I forgot the “at” in that last sentence at first. I am so good.)

8:00am: Henry just came back in from taking HIS stuff (and not mine?!) out to the car and said now the girl is sitting out there, eating a muffin, and all of her stuff is in garbage bags.

8:05am: We just checked out and that girl was sitting in the lobby going round and round with the front desk clerk, who I think now might be her SISTER?! She was like DONT WALK AWAY FROM ME! and the older lady was like I HAVE CUSTOMERS! (OMG me and Henry are now a part of this story because WE WERE THE CUSTOMERS so now, years from now, when they tell this story around the fire on Christmas Eve, when they get to the CUSTOMERS part, I hope they describe me as “That young Jennifer Anoston-looking sweetheart” and Henry will probably be “and her old, grizzled captor.”

That girl totally lives there though.

8:41am: We’re on the road now and I’m nostalgically playing Riot Fest music for Henry who is unenthused and just yelled at me for not helping him get change for the toll booth, to which I countered, “Yeah well, I don’t have my sunglasses!” (?) Henry said, “That’s not my fault. I can’t be in charge of your sunglasses when I’m already in chafe of everything else. Like, your tampons.” Haha it’s true.

But really: Alexisonfire and Beach Slang up in here right now.

9:36am: Henry just flipped out because the toll booth lane we were in had a malfunctioning ticket thing and he pulled over and left me in the car (DANGEROUS) so he could be a good professional driver by skipping off to the highway office thing and reporting the broken machine. Also, because he needed to get a ticket, I guess. He just came back to the car and exhaled deeply, like he’s so winded from being a turnpike kiss ass.

10:13am: Welp. Just took a detour to LaPorte, Indiana’s historical society because they have the wheelbarrow that a mass husband killer used to cart away their bodies. But…they’re closed on Mondays. Henry just threw a royal bitch fit as I quietly whispered “sorry” and then proceeded to crack up. But hey, LaPorte is kind of pretty, isn’t it Henry? Kind of? No?

 LAPORTE, represent.

10:46am: twenty minutes into Set Your Goals, Henry casually asked, “Is this the little guy and the big guy?” AW HE REMEMBERED! And the big guy was actually just regular-sized, but the little guy was so little that he made the other guy look big. I forgot how much I loved this band! I went nuts over them during the summer of 2009 and made Alisha go to their sold out show at Mr.Small’s on my birthday. It was a total sausage party and some fat guy shook his sweat all over Alisha and she did that thing where she tries to murder me with her Fairuza Balk eyes.

11:52am: PS I think we crossed the time change line thing.

12:13pm: At a rest stop near South Bend and a bunch of Riot Fest travelers were there too and now I feel homesick for Douglas Park. (THAT IS WHERE RIOT FEST WAS, OK?!)

12:43pm: I just had a huge epiphany.   I was just telling Henry stories from when I had to take Home Ec in middle school, and how much of a disaster I was. “I’m not surprised,” he mumbled. It was because we were talking about buying a sewing machine for a project we want to do (“we” lol) and it made me think about when I had to make these boxer-type shorts and mine should have been so cute because I had CANDY CORN fabric but instead they just came out looking wrecked. As I was telling Henry this story, I was overcome with a sense of doom and these repressed memories of home ec misery came flooding back to me. I forgot how much I disliked the teacher and how panicked she made me feel, especially during the cooking portions of the classes. I would get sick to my stomach on home ec days. Is it any wonder I rejected domesticity?!

1:55pm: just left the Four Season family restaurant in Montpelier, Ohio and I was so happy to finally sit down for a meal after three days of eating while standing in the middle of thousands of people. Henry ordered lemon rice soup because the hipsters on Yelp told him to. He said it was great but it was made with chicken broth so I couldn’t form my own opinion on this matter.

 I ordered the Four Seasons omelette which was basically a Greek omelette and HUGE — I was so excited until I took a gigantic bite because I’m so fat and IT WAS LOADED WITH CHICKEN. I don’t know how I missed that on the menu. Luckily the pieces were giant and easily pick-outtable. I could only eat about a third anyway and then Papa Pig swooped in and ate the rest. I messaged a picture to Chooch and he was like “haha figures.” Now Henry is ranting about how he’s fat because Chooch and I never finish our food and apparently we hold a gun to his head and force him to eat it for us.

Meanwhile, I paid 50 cents for a copy of Frank Talk to read at the table so I wouldn’t have to talk to Henry. My new life goal is to get something printed in a future issue.  

WHAT IF HENRY AND I HAD OUR OWN MAGAZINE? Wait….I guess that’s just my blog. Maybe I should start charging for subscriptions! Jim & Pat seem to have a real racket going on.

(Just kidding-I’d never charge anyone to read my typo-laden bullshit!)

3:24pm: IM BACK. I was getting car sick SUE ME. I spent the last hour regaling Henry with stories of Erin the Yo Girl because seeing SNOOP DOGG last night really reactivated that dormant gene. I was telling him about seeing Bone and Biggie back in the day and he’s sneering at me in a way that makes me feel like he’s maybe relieved he didn’t know me then. Especially when I got to the part about lining my lips and wearing almost-brown lipstick. That’s how we did it back in the mid-90s OK?!

4:26pm: You know I’m in a hurry to get home to Chooch when I eschew the Roadside America temptation. CHOOCH I MISS YOUUUUUU. We’ve been messaging and video-chatting via Facebook all weekend so that’s been super helpful. We’re never away from each other for more than a day because we’re REALLY ATTACHED TO EACH OTHER OK. Also I just pretended to shoot Henry in the face at the end of Mr. Bill Collector and he was not pleased. YOUR RENT’S DUE MOTHERFUCKER.

5:12pm: Chooch just facetimed me and I got to watch him eating pierogies so there’s that.

6:40pm: Well, Most Boring Liveblog Ever, I’m about to be home in 5 minutes! Would have updated more but my WordPress app is lagging big time and all I have been doing anyway is talking with Henry about music for 8 hours and you guys don’t care about that shit. HENRY sure doesnt! KBYE!

****

EDITED TO ADD: So on the way home, Henry was like ” I dunno why you keep whining about missing Chooch because you know you guys will be fighting within 2 minutes, so….”

Came home and Chooch came prancing across the street to meet us in the parking lot (yes, he looked both ways—Henry taught him how to cross the street unjackassedly) and after hugging each other and squealing, we immediately started arguing about whether it was a stick or dog poop that Chooch nearly stepped on in the grass.

“Thirty seconds,” Henry mumbled.

Seriously though it was fossilized poop!

(OMFG I missed Chooch so much. He was so excited to see us and even gave us weird nose nuzzles before he went to bed, what the fuck world am I even in anymore?)

    On our way back to the hotel after a beautiful, chill first day of Riot Fest. The weather was awful when we were waiting in line (of course the gates didn’t open until 90 minutes after they were supposed to) but it was gorgeous for the rest of the day. No repeats of last year!

The drive to Chicago was super uneventful. We left after work yesterday and drove as far as South Bend, IN and crashed at the Waterford, which is my favorite hotel in South Bend. (Also the only one I’ve ever stayed at, but Henry was going to book a different hotel and I flipped out because WATERFORD.) Got to Chicago around 9:30 and then Bobby from Lyft carted our asses to Douglas Park. So many beautiful bands were seen today. 

Here’s a picture of Henry giving some French Canadian broad directions in a city he doesn’t even live in. Professional driver 4 lyfe.  
I’m really looking forward to taking my boots off and hounding Henry about what parts of today were his favorite. I feel so heart-eyed right now. 

Not even the dump Henry has us staying in can ruin that. (But it comes close. Hilariously, Golden Girls is on right now and Rose, talking about Miles, just said, “He’s not just frugal, he’s frickenfrugal! What, it’s a Scandinavian term.” #apropos.)

The truth is, I have purposely been putting off writing the last installment of Riot Fest, because it feels like once I write it, then that’s it: Riot Fest is truly over. The whole weekend was so perfect to me, especially coming off the tail end of a summer that was emotionally draining, just a total black spot on the year. Maybe it seems like I’m being overly-dramatic, god knows that’s basically my default, but I’m serious when I say that my three days at Humboldt Park felt like a religious retreat, in the same way that some people climb mountains to escape their past, cast out their demons in sweat lodges, or rail a quadstack off a hooker’s ass in the back of a 1984 Pinto.

This is how I heal.

The whole weekend was a collection of experiences and heart-clutching moments, stepping stones that paved the way to the culmination of my catharsis: The Cure.

As I mentioned in my last Riot Fest post, The Cure was scheduled to play the main stage at 7:45, so we made our way over there during Patti Smith’s 5:45 set in hopes of getting a decent spot.

My expectations were low. I even told Henry that I didn’t care if we ended up across the park by the food trucks. As long as I could hear The Cure (and not shitty Weezer who were going to be playing at the same time on a smaller stage), I was fine. Besides, I had been dragging Henry around like a rag doll all weekend, and I knew he probably wouldn’t want to be standing stock-still in the middle of 50,000 people at the end of the day.

Except that Henry grabbed my hand and pulled me further into the crowd during Patti’s set. Every time even the smallest gap would open ahead of us, he would continue to squeeze us in. And he kept doing this until we finally hit a wall of unbudging people. Still, I was impressed with his determination and how far it got us, so I wasn’t complaining!

After Patti was over at 6:45, people began leaving the Riot Stage, which opened up more spots, so Henry once again tgook  my hand and started weaving us closer to the stage. He got us to a really great spot, about 50 heads back from the stage. This was pretty remarkable, considering most people had been standing there all day in order to get a close spot.

Don’t tell him this, but Henry was kind of my hero that night.

Social Distortion began playing on the stage adjacent to us and I was so thankful that we got to listen a decent band for the next hour, because I was so full of anxiety waiting for The Cure, that I couldn’t imagine adding shitty music on top of that. Also during this time, we made friends with the people around us, like an older couple (Henry’s age, probably, haha) from St. Louis. The wife was really kind to me and even offered to take the above picture of me and Henry, which is why he’s smiling — because a stranger is taking the picture. She reminded me a little bit of my friend Natasha, who is also a rabid Cure fan, and I think that’s why I liked her so much.

The view behind me. 

The only downside while waiting was the two middle-aged assholes in front of me, who spent the whole wait loudly talking about how they’re such seasoned music festival attendees, and how they saw The Cure last year at ACL and then the one guy, the one who was wearing a huge professional backpack that jutted so far from his back that it kept hitting me in the face, extracted a video camera with an extension stick thing and I was just like, “Oh great. And he’s a rock documentarian, too.”

I don’t think that’s a word.

Then they started making a big deal about passing a joint back and forth, like LOOK AT US, WE’RE OLD AND STILL SMOKE POT! and I honestly had to cup my hands in front of face in case I needed to catch my eyeballs when they rolled out of my head.

When I heard of one them mention Weezer’s upcoming set, it all made sense to me. Weezer fans. Of course.

My new friend from St. Louis pulled me closer to her so that dildo’s backpack wouldn’t hit me in the face anymore, and I thanked her profusely.

She was also extremely good at blocking people from getting in front of us once The Cure started. We worked hard for our spots way before The Cure came on! You can’t expect to wait until after they start playing and just steamroll your way  through. Bitch, you gotta work for that shit.

I like Social D just fine, but when they were still playing “Ring of Fire” at 7:45, I was like, “I FUCKING HATE YOU SOCIAL D! STFU! GO HOME!” And then Mike Ness kept screaming, “ONE MORE TIME!” and the crowd over at that stage would sing the fucking chorus ONE MORE TIME and it was so obnoxious and we were all getting super agitated.

So they went a few minutes over. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but that was like an entire extra song that The Cure have played at the end of the night!

But as soon as the last note of “Ring of Fire” petered off into the air, the lights on the Riot Stage came on and the most beautiful sounds to ever have been crafted enveloped us all in such warm beauty. And then Robert walked on the stage and my hands flung up to my chest and basically stayed there for the next two hours, along with the burning lump in my throat and the stinging tears in my eyes.

The Cure, you guys. The motherfucking Cure. This was my fifth time, but it might as well have been my first. Seeing them will never lose its value to me.

I have never been the type of person who could separate herself from the show unfurling in front of her long enough to keep track of the set list. Luckily, I knew that Chain of Flowers (the best Cure fansite in the world) would have me covered.

• Open
• Fascination Street
• Sleep When I’m Dead
• Push
• Inbetween Days
• Play For Today
• A Forest
• Before Three
• Lovesong
• Just Like Heaven
• From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
• alt.end
• Pictures of You
• Lullaby
• Close To Me
• Hot Hot Hot
• Wrong Number
• The Caterpillar
• The Walk
• Mint Car
• Friday I’m In Love
• Doing the Unstuck
• Bananafishbones
• Want
• Hungry Ghost
• One Hundred Years
• End.

We were this close! Not bad for waiting until 6PM to stake out a spot!

Around 8:30, the idiots in front of me (who acted all smug as  they recounted all the times they’ve seen The Cure and the proceeded to just stand there like lumps once the show started…some fans they are) got their Riot Fest alert on their phones that OMG WEEZER was about to start over on the Revolt Stage, so they turned around and began pushing their way out of the crowd. I cheered and then moved up into their vacated spots, which came with a better view of my beloved Robert Smith.

Aside from those Weezer dorks, we were surrounded by true Cure fans. Those who knew all the words, knew to thrust their hands upward when Robert sang, “Put your hands in the sky” during From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, and who didn’t engage in banal discourse with their friends. I know that if we had stayed in the back, I would have been miserable and forced to listen to drunk assholes scream to each other about sports and god knows what else. Just like the miserable time I saw them at miserable Coachella, where drunk frat boys screamed out, “Play Just Like Heaven, Fat Bob!

” and then booed every time deeper cuts were played instead. Fucking Americans. The Cure graces our country with their presence and this is how they’re treated. Coachella will always have such a sour connotation to me. The hipsters can have it.

I can’t think of a better way this weekend could have ended. My favorite band in the whole entire world with my favorite person in the whole entire world (ugh fine, I’m referring to Henry and not Robert Smith). There’s no one else I would have rather experienced this with, no one else who understands how much this band and this music means to me.

When we first started to get to know each other back in 2000/2001, before we were dating, Henry made me a Cure screensaver. Totally out of the blue. I was like, “OK. You have my attention.” I know that The Cure headlining this festival is without a doubt the reason Henry didn’t say no to me.

And he actually said that this was his favorite part of Riot Fest and not because it signified that the end was near.

He even displayed moderate levels of PDA throughout the night by placing his hands on my back!

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea – Chicago, Riot Fest 14-Sep-2014 from itsaperfectday on Vimeo.

Thank you to this person ^^^ for recording this because my heart felt like it was about to combust inside my rib cage during this one. One of my all-time favorites, ow ow ow. 

There was supposed to have been an encore, but they ran out of time. Thanks, Social Distortion.

Even though I think this was the shortest of the 5 Cure concerts I’ve been to (clocked in at just over 2 hours), I have to say this one ranks #2 on my list. Right under Canberra, Australia for the Bloodflowers tour. It was the perfect crowd, the perfect ambiance, the perfect company and the perfect weekend. What else can I really say about it, short of copy/pasting every synonym for “heaven” and “perfect” and “emo” and “STFU Erin, we get it.”

****

“You know what would have made that weekend even more perfect?” I asked Henry on the way back to Pittsburgh the next day. “If you had proposed to me during The Cure. Way to go, you blew it.”

Because even during moments of extreme, euphoric perfection, I still manage to find the flaws. But I wouldn’t be me otherwise. Right?

RIGHT?!

Shit. Before we even finished breakfast (that’s a word with which the Econo Lodge takes great liberties), I was already feeling that panicky “today is the last day” sensation percolating in my gut.

(I’m sure Henry was experiencing very different feelings. His was probably more of a giddy countdown.)

We accidentally found a fly-by-night event parking lot on our way to Humboldt Park the day before, so Henry decided THE HELL WITH UBER, we’re going to entrust our car with these people that are wearing neon construction vests so they must be legit.

It took us three days to figure out there was an actual area where we were supposed to be waiting for our stupid Uber rides. 

The sketchy parking lot cost the same as a one-way trip with Uber, and it wasn’t my money Henry was using anyway, so what did I care. All I knew was that we were only two blocks away from my homeland and I couldn’t wait to get there.

And stand in line for an hour. Because even by the third day, the gatekeepers hadn’t gotten their shit together.

All three days, we were lucky to not get stuck by any assholes, at least. The guy in front of us, whom I dubbed Dwight Hader, because he reminded me of Dwight Schrute and Bill Hader, was there by himself. “I’m just here for Patti Smith and The Cure,” he said nervously. “Basically, I’m going to get all the way to the front of the stage for The Cure,” he told us of his Riot Fest plans.

“Were you here the other days, too? What was it like? What’s the food like? Is it expensive?”

“Do you think I’ll be able to take in my water?” he asked anyone who was listening.

He was very concerned with his unopened water bottle.

Would it be confiscated? Did he have to drink it all now? Because he wasn’t thirsty yet. He wanted that water for later, when he was raging to Patti Smith. BECAUSE THE NIGHT BELONGS TO WATER.

The girl behind me pointed out that empty water bottles were allowed in, because there were refilling stations. But she and I both said that probably an unopened bottle wasn’t a good idea. The girl’s boyfriend was like, “Eh, just do it. Smuggling in water is so punk rock, man.” And Henry was like “IDGAF what this kid does.”

Meanwhile, the couple behind me were talking about all of the ska bands that they had seen so far at Riot Fest and I was so thankful that I wasn’t there with them because ska is pretty much the only music genre that I flat-out dislike. There isn’t one ska band that’s redeemable to me. I’m sorry if you’re a ska fan. I promise we can still be friends. Just get those fucking trumpets out of my face. I DON’T EVEN LIKE THE JAMAICA SKA SCENE IN BACK TO THE BEACH AND THAT IS LIKE MY FAVORITE MOVIE.

1. Whispering, “It’ll be alright, Water Bottle. We’ll figure something out.” 2. Googling “will I be detained for bringing an unopened water bottle into Riot Fest?” // “ways to make a water bottle in your pants look like a medical condition that security guards won’t ask about.” // “smuggling contraband into a music festival- WWJD?”

MENZINGERS

• TheMenzingers were due to start playing a few minutes after the gates finally opened. (DwightHader and his unopened bottle of water made it through unscathed!) But we had enough time to hit up one oftheRiotFestmerch booths soIcouldfinallybuy the hoodie I wanted,whichofcoursewas sold out so I got all shitty about and ended up buying a t-shirt that I didn’t even want and then I proceeded to bitch about it on the way to the Roots Stage so Henry was like OMG I WILL FIND YOU A FUCKING HOODIE but apparently he said this to himself because I had no idea where he had gone off to, leaving me to stand alone with strangers by the stage. Then he returnedrightbeforetheMenzingers came out, and he had the hoodie I wanted, but then I was still mad because now I had a t-shirt and hoodie in the same design and that seemed so unnecessary so I threw another tantrum and then Henry was like I AM GOING TO COLD COCK  YOU but instead of doing that, he grabbed the t-shirt from me and stormed off and then the show started so I hadtowatchtheMenzingers by myself.
  • This was surprisingly the only time we fought all weekend.
  • I hated not knowing where he went/what he was doing/if he was coming back.
    • Every time I glanced behind me, I thought I saw him, but it was always one of the other 8700 guys wearing a blue flannel that day.
• Even though I was quietly stewing over this hoodie/t-shirt emergency, I still found some room in my head and heart to enjoy the Menzingers. I only have a very base knowledge of them, thanks to my friend Terri, and since I know how much she loves them, I made a point to check them out. It was a good way to start the last day, because they got everyone pumped right out of the gates.
• I texted Terri the lyrics to the one song they played that I really liked, and she was like, “That’s from their new album. That song is so emo!” Which totally explains why I liked it!
• After their set ended,Ipanic-strickenly made my way through a moving wall of people, desperately looking for Henry, near tears (I HATE FEELING LOST), but then he grabbed my arm and I suddenly forgot that I was in the middle of hating him because YAY I’M NOT LOST ANYMORE!
  • “You were never lost,” he sighed. “I knewwhereyouwerethe whole time.”
    • In case you were wondering, Henry apparently exchanged the t-shirt for an XS for Chooch, which made me mad all over again because why the fuck would Chooch want a t-shirt from a festival he didn’t go to?! And to back this up, when we gave it to him, he was like, “Ok….?” and then right away noticed that one of the bands on the back of the shirt was Pity Sex, so then he was like, “REALLY, MOMMY?! REALLY?!” all annoyed and exasperated.

LAURA STEVENSON

• There was nothing on Sunday’s line-up that was OMG URGENT for me to see until Billy Bragg played around 2.
  • To Henry this meant: YAY LET’S GO FIND A TREE TO SIT UNDER FOR A FEW HOURS AND CLOSE OUR EYES AND HOPEFULLY DIE.
  • To me this meant: Let’s wander around and check out the other stages! We might find our new favorite band!
• Of course, my plan won out and that is how we wound up at the Rise Stage in time for Laura Stevenson, who has an accordion player and is just the most adorable thing I saw on stage all weekend. I’m notoriously picky when it comes to girl singers, but her style was kind of old Tegan andSarameetsSherriDuPreefromEisley, in a way. I immediately adored her.
  • Especially when she pretty much announced every song as, “OK, this is a sad one.”
    • I love sad music.
    • Her music was the deceiving kind of sad though, where it sounds happy and upbeat but, no.
• Laura’s between-song-banter was painfully awkward at times, which endeared her to me even more.
• Fuck it, go listen to her on Spotify and then buy her albums!

Henry’s mad because we were kind of matching. Also, I think this was right before La Dispute and he hates La Dispute.

THE FRONT BOTTOMS

• Right after Laura was done playing, The Front Bottoms came on the adjacent Revolt Stage. This is another band that I have read and heard a lot about but just never bothered checking out. Since we still had a little bit of time to kill and the stage they were playing on was conveniently located near the one Billy Bragg would later be playing on, I dragged Henry through droves of lost locust-people and claimed a prime spot near the side of the stage.
• And then they came on and proceeded to captivate us for their entire 30 minute set.
  • If you can win me over with your stage presence alone, then you’re doing it right.
  • If your music is good enough to back up your stage presence, then you’re golden.
• I thought Henry hated them, but he admitted later that they were a high point for him.
  • Last week, I came home from meeting my friend Katrina for coffee, and Henry was flat out listening to them on xbox music. “SO WHAT?!” he cried in defense, like his mom just busted him watching tranny bukakke.
• They reminded me a little bit of Never Shout Never for grown-ups, so I wondered if Chooch would like them too. Spoiler: he does.
• My favorite part was when Tiny Moving Parts stormed the stage and started fucking with them. I LOVE IT WHEN BANDS ARE FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER.

BILLY BRAGG

• WhenIsawBillywas listed on the line-up, I died a little of excitement. This guy is a living legend and I made Henry get right up front for him.
  • We were surrounded by a lot of Older People so I thought Henry would feel safe.
• In high school, I dated this real piece of shit. Pretty much everyone called him Psycho Mike, because well, that’s what you call a guy who intentionally sets his best friend’s house on fire (thankfully,whilethe whole family was on vacation, but still) all over a video game.
  • Yes, I knew this going in to things, but warning labels don’t ever deter me.
  • Anyway, Psycho Mike and I didn’t have much in common, musically. I would cringe when he would play Anal Cunt in his car and even though I bought him the Misfits boxed set for Valentine’s Day one year, I made it clear that I didn’t want to listen to it. We would meet in the middle with classic rock mostly, but occasionally he would play things for me that I actually liked. Some of those things were: Neutral Milk Hotel, Hayden, and Billy Bragg.
• Billy Bragg is a British folk/punk singer-songwriter who sings a lot about politics, which usually isn’t my cup of tea, but there is just something about him that has always appealed to me. I thought Henry would be all about him too, since Billy is known to sing in favor of all those blue-collared blokes like Henry. But Henry was just like “eh” when I asked him if he enjoyed it, which basically means Henry is clearly a fascist.

 Henry not understanding why everyone was all FUCK YES during Billy Bragg.

• My favorite Billy Bragg songs are “Must I Paint You a Picture,” “St. Swithin’s Day,” “She’s Got a New Spell,” “The Man in the Iron Mask” and “A New England,” none of which he played, but he did play my ALL TIME FAVORITE which is “The Milkman of Human Kindness” and the 17-year-old slut-who-was-fucking-around-with-a-psychopath-in-1996 in me was so stoked.
• Billy also made me super stoked about Scotland, which I had otherwise not really thought about at all because it’s basically me and my music under a rock. But on this day, I was like, “YAYSCOTLAND! GO GET ‘EM!” And then suddenly I understoodwhysomemenhad been walking around Humboldt Park all weekend in kilts and carrying Scottish flags.
  • I catch on quick.

• Might sound extreme, but getting to see Billy Bragg live was a milestone for me. I have literally waited half my life! This man is a living legend. Familiarize yourself with him.

TINY MOVING PARTS

• On our way to the Rock Stage, immediately after Billy Bragg, we got to catch a little bit of Tiny Moving Parts.
• Henry said he doesn’t remember this happening at all. I think he might have been buying more cheese-on-sticks and beer?
• TMP iskindoflikeneo-emo I guess? It’s definitely a sound that I really adore. And they are really energetic and passionate on stage, which is what made me stop mid-trek to the Rock Stage and say to Henry, “They are calling to me.”
  • I like them way more live than listening to them, say, while driving to the dentist or writing in my blog.

LA DISPUTE

A rare moment where Henry got to sit for a few minutes until the girl next to him annoyed him to such extreme levels that he suddenly didn’t care about resting his weary joints anymore and actually stood up and moved. And no, surprisingly, that girl wasn’t me. 

• I let Henry stand far away for La Dispute because he can’t stand them. But I was like, “See ya, sucker” and elbowed my way through the crowd along the side of the stage until I was nearly to the front. I stopped right before I hit prime crowd-surfing / circle pit real estate. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that deep down, I have some fragments of the “Sensible Mom” gene and I remember to keep myself safe.
  • Otherwise, I just feel like I would be such a great candidate for Idiot Who Broke Her Neck At a Show.
• Have you ever listened to La Dispute? They are a part of a music genre that I am in love with. Like, if I could mold it into a penis, I would fuck it. It’s technically post-hardcore, and Jordan Dreyer shouts and barks the lyrics with so much emotion, that it’s, for me, the equivalent of listening to some kind of passionate Sunday sermon. Their songs tell stories that make the hair grow erect on my arms and I spent most of the time standing there with my eyes closed and, at times, wishing I had a wall in front of me to punch. There’s an urgency to the music and the way the vocals are delivered that make me feel uncontrollably aggressive. And then….sad.
• When they played “King Park,” we all went fucking nuts.  This song is about a shooting and all of the elements and emotions surrounding it, and it is raw, devastating, angry, sad, honest—this song is REAL LIFE. The way they build up to the crescendo of this song, OMFG—it’s like climaxing for real.  Jordan started hoarsely shouting “Can I still get into Heaven if I kill myself?” and that’s when I realized that I had been crying through the whole fucking thing.

• “Wasn’t that fucking amazing!?” I cried afterward, reunited with Henry. “Not really,” he mumbled.
• I walked away feeling like I could start a revolution. Or at the very least, make a REALLY GOOD POSTER about MAYBE starting a revolution.

TEGAN AND SARA

• I first saw Tegan and Sara in the year 2000 at now-defunct club in Pittsburgh called Rosebud. I didn’t know anything about them but my friend Wonka was like, “I heard one of their songs on WYEP. PLEASE GO WITH ME!” Wonka was my prime concert-buddy back then, and we went to tons of shows where we barely knew who we were seeing, plus I was buying my ticket with my AmEx that my mom paid for, so why not? It was us and maybe 40 other people and I think Tegan and Sara walked away with all of our hearts that night. They were VERY different than they are now, way more stripped down, way less pop. But their stage banter was just as on point. We got to meet them that night and I still look at that picture, of these twins who look so different now, and I laugh because I remember saying to Wonka, “Holy shit, these girls are going to explode!”
• They were playing on the main stage at Riot Fest to some tens of thousands of people, so I’d say that they definitely exploded.
• I didn’t want to get too close because I knew we were going to have to split before they were done, and I didn’t want to make our exit any more difficult than it needed to be, so we stood pretty far away. The problem with that is that the further away you stand, the more likely you are to surround yourself with people who couldn’t give a fuck what band is playing, they’re just going to stand there and brag about what college their daughter is going to. Sometimes old people are WAY WORSE at shows than young people.
• The first time Henry saw Tegan and Sara was with me in 2002/2003 at the Hard Rock Cafe. He didn’t know anything about them but it didn’t take him long to realize that he was a man in a roomful of lesbians. At one point, he tried to go to the bathroom, but a girl with a shaved, rainbow-tattooed head was blocking his way (not even menacingly! she didn’t know she was in his way!), so he turned around and came back. I think about this EVERY TIME I hear a Tegan and Sara song. GOOD TIMES.
• And before you’re like “Tegan and Sara are so Top 40,” please watch this video:

• Sure, they’re mainstream now but I will always believe that they still have a little bit of that quaint singer-songwriter ethic that they did when they were teenagers. I just love them.

Never had time to play Riot Putt. :( Or go through the Zombie Contamination Unit. Or ride any rides. Or see the sideshows. TOO MANY BANDS. 

 MINERAL

• We cut out of Tegan and Sara in order to run back to the Rock Stage just in time to see Mineral, who have recently gone on tour for the first time in 17 years. I’m so happy Riot Fest was on the super-shortlist of shows they were doing, because god knows Pittsburgh was nowhere on that list.
• MineralisstraightupEMO.
  • I fucking love emo.
• Mineral broke up in 1997, before I ever had a chance to see them. The singer went on to form The Gloria Record, another band that I fucking loved so hard but never got to see live. Henry claims he has no absolutely no recollection of a band called The Gloria Record and I was like “ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID, I LISTENED TO ONE OF THEIR ALBUMS COMPULSIVELY IN 2005!” Then I even played him my favorite song (“Good Morning, Providence” — if you look at my Spotify sidebar, it’s actually the second song listed in my “Perennial Favorites” playlist, COME ON HENRY) and he was like, “Nope. Don’t know it.” That man is a master of tuning things out.
• However, Henry admitted that Mineral was “pretty good.” The whole time I was just standing there in awe, thinking of how grateful I was to get to see them after all this time. So grateful that I almost wrote an emo poem about it.

PATTI SMITH

• After Mineral, we decided that we should probably make our way back to the Riot Stage because if we waited too close to The Cure’s start time, we would never be able to get close enough. Patti Smith was playing at the time, so we pushed our way through the outskirts of a crowd of aging hippies screaming along to “Because the Night.”
• If it wasn’t for the sake of the Cure, I never have would have stopped to watch her. I’m sure that makes me something of a heathen to a lot of people. I can definitely respect her! I understand the mark she’s left on not only the music industry but also the political landscape. She’s a living, breathing legacy. I get it. And while it’s not particularly my thing, I am definitely glad that I can say “I saw Patti Smith.”
• She is old as shit but fuck if she wasn’t rocking the shit out of that stage.
• There were men older than Henry standing around us who were screaming “PATTI!!!” so fiercely, I feared that they were going to hemorrhage.
• In between every song, Patti would stand on her soapbox and promise us that we can change the world. “PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER!” she kept shouting and everyone screamed so loudly that they turned into South Park Canadians.
• By the time her set was over, I definitely didn’t feel like I could change the world, but I would have liked to have changed into a pair of more comfortable shoes.

I’m going to end this here because I’ve been writing it for four days and I want The Cure to have their own post. Because they’re the motherfucking Cure.

If you’ve read any of these word-dumps, I am eternally grateful (and extremely shocked)!